Phillips v. Payne, 92 U.S. 130 (1875), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the court held that a taxpayer does not have standing to challenge the validity of retrocession, because whether a state controls a territory is based on its de facto control, not whether the state has a de jure right to control it. The court observed that since 1847, pursuant to the act of Congress of the preceding year, the State of Virginia had been in de facto possession of the County of Alexandria, which, prior thereto, formed a part of the District of Columbia. This reclamation of the land was called retrocession. The court did not reach the question of whether retrocession was unconstitutional.Evan C. Zoldan, THE PERMANENT SEAT OF GOVERNMENT: AN UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCE OF HEIGHTENED SCRUTINY UNDER THE CONTRACT CLAUSE, 14 J. Legislation & Pup. Pol'y 163 (2011).
The theory that the United States recognizes territorial sovereignty based on the fact of territorial rule rather than the right to rule has been rejected since Phillips.
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