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Nature of Suit Code: 440
Nature of Suit: Other Civil Rights
Cause of Action: 

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United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Filed May 13, 1997

No. 97-5005

PATRICK J. MAHONEY, REVEREND;

THE CHRISTIAN DEFENSE COALITION,

APPELLANTS 

v.

BRUCE BABBITT, IN HIS OFFICIAL CAPACITY AS 

SECRETARY OF THE UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR;

NATIONAL PARK SERVICE,

APPELLEES 

Appeal from the United States District Court 

for the District of Columbia 

(No. 96cv02827)

-

On Appellees' Petition for Rehearing

-

Before WILLIAMS, SENTELLE and HENDERSON, Circuit 

Judges.

Opinion for the court filed by Circuit Judge SENTELLE.

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SENTELLE, Circuit Judge: We issued an injunction pending 

appeal in this matter, by order of January 19, 1997. We 

further explained our reasons in an opinion of February 11, 

1997. This case now returns to us on appellees' petition 

seeking rehearing and vacatur on two grounds: first, that the 

petition is moot under the Munsingwear doctrine and second, 

that in our original opinion we erred in "grant[ing] relief not 

sought by appellants in District Court." Because we conclude that neither argument warrants the relief prayed, we 

deny the petition. We do, however, note that insofar as 

appellants' appeal seeks any relief beyond that already granted in our ruling on the preliminary injunction, appellees' 

claim of mootness is well taken. Therefore, insofar as any 

other aspect of the case remains pending before us, we order 

the same dismissed.

I.

While we have set forth the background of this controversy 

in our earlier opinion, Mahoney v. Babbitt, 105 F.3d 1452 

(D.C. Cir. 1997), we will briefly review its history as is 

necessary for the resolution of the petition now before us. 

On December 23, 1996, the Reverend Patrick J. Mahoney and 

the Christian Defense Coalition ("appellants") filed their complaint seeking, inter alia, preliminary and injunctive relief 

against defendants carrying out threats to arrest Mahoney 

and his associates if they displayed signs critical of President 

Clinton on sidewalks adjacent to Pennsylvania Avenue during 

the Inaugural Parade scheduled for January 20, 1997. Defendants opposed plaintiffs' motion for preliminary injunction. 

Because of the shortness of time before the critical events, on 

January 3, 1997, plaintiffs moved to accelerate the hearing on 

the preliminary injunction. On January 16, the Thursday 

before the scheduled parade of Monday, January 20, the 

District Court denied the preliminary injunction.

Mahoney and his associates remained under threat of arrest if they exercised their First Amendment rights by displaying signs critical of the President under circumstances in 

which defendants had admitted that persons displaying signs 

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supportive of the President would not be arrested. Appellants appealed. On Saturday, January 18, appellants filed an 

emergency motion for injunction pending appeal from the 

denial of the preliminary injunction. In view of the critical 

shortage of time, we expedited the proceeding. Appellees 

filed opposition to the preliminary injunction. The American 

Civil Liberties Union filed a brief as amicus curiae, and on 

Sunday, January 19, we issued our order preliminarily enjoining defendants. Our order granted the emergency motion in 

part, enjoining appellees and their agents "from arresting or 

interfering with one or a group of twenty-five or fewer of the 

plaintiffs displaying signs at the Inaugural Parade expressing 

criticism of the President of the United States or his policies 

except in circumstances in which appellees and their agents 

would arrest or interfere with individuals displaying signs not 

critical to the President or his policies." Appellants did not 

seek a stay, either from this court or from the Circuit Justice 

or any other Justice of the Supreme Court. See 28 U.S.C. 

§ 2101(f); SUP. CT. R. 22-23. On January 20, the Inaugural 

Parade was held as scheduled. Our order was effective, and 

appellants were able to display their signs on the same terms 

as citizens having different viewpoints.

Appellees now return, petitioning for rehearing and a vacatur of our prior order and the accompanying opinion, asserting mootness and also arguing in the alternative that the 

relief granted was not within the power of the court in the 

proceedings before us. While the alternate ground, concerning the relief granted, borders on the frivolous, if indeed it 

does not occupy that territory, the mootness argument raises 

sufficiently serious questions to warrant our consideration, 

although we ultimately reject it.

II.

Appellees' mootness argument rests on the fundamental 

principle of our jurisprudence that Article III of the Constitution "limits the "judicial power' of the United States to the 

resolution of "cases' and "controversies.' " Valley Forge 

Christian College v. Americans United for Separation of 

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Church and State, 454 U.S. 464, 471 (1982). Out of this 

principle there arise "several "doctrines that cluster about 

Article III---... standing, mootness, ripeness, political question, and the like....' " Louisiana Envt'l Action Network v. 

Browner, 87 F.3d 1379, 1382 (D.C. Cir. 1996) (quoting Allen v. 

Wright, 468 U.S. 737, 750 (1984)) (additional internal quotations and citations omitted). Mootness comes into question 

when "circumstances ... destroy the justiciability of a suit 

previously suitable for determination." 13A WRIGHT ET AL.,

FEDERAL PRACTICE AND PROCEDURE § 3533 (2d ed. 1984). As 

appellees point out, appellants only sought relief allowing 

them to exercise their First Amendment rights at the Inaugural Parade on January 20, 1997. That date has come and 

gone; appellees were enjoined from interfering with appellants' exercise of their First Amendment rights; and, there is 

no relief left to grant. Thus, insofar as this case remains an 

open one, we agree with appellees that it must be dismissed 

for mootness. The question on which appellees have not so 

quickly satisfied us is whether we should vacate the relief 

which we have heretofore grantedthat is, our prior order 

and opinion.

Appellees' argument for vacatur begins with United States 

v. Munsingwear, Inc., 340 U.S. 36 (1950), for many years the 

leading case on vacatur. In that case the Supreme Court 

recognized that "[t]he established practice" of the federal 

appellate system "in dealing with a civil case from a federal 

court ... which has become moot while on its way" to the 

appellate court "is to reverse or vacate the judgment below 

and remand with a direction to dismiss." Id. at 39. Of 

course the Munsingwear language which we quote and on 

which appellees rely, while instructive, is not controlling. 

The First Amendment questions arising in our review of the 

denial of the preliminary injunction did not grow moot while 

the case was on its way here. If January 20th had come and 

gone before the issuance of our order, the Munsingwear

language would be more squarely on point. Or, if the appellees had sought a stay of our order from the Supreme Court 

or one of its Justices, and January 20th and the Parade had 

passed pending the action of the highest court, again the 

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Munsingwear language would be on point. But that is not 

what happened. At the time of the allegedly mooting circumstances, rather than being "on its way here," the case had 

arrived here, and we had decided it. Thus, the vacatur 

question is now controlled, not by the language from Munsingwear, but by U.S. Bancorp Mortgage Co. v. Bonner Mall 

Partnership, 513 U.S. 18 (1994), which has displaced Munsingwear as the Supreme Court's latest word on vacatur. In 

U.S. Bancorp, as appellees point out to us, the Court reaffirmed the Munsingwear principle "that mootness by happenstance provides sufficient reason to vacate" the judgment 

below. Id. at 25 n.3. But the reasoning underlying the 

Munsingwear doctrine as reaffirmed in U.S. Bancorp is that 

"[a] party who seeks review of the merits of an adverse 

ruling, but is frustrated by the vagaries of circumstance, 

ought not in fairness be forced to acquiesce in the judgment." 

Id. at 25. However, the Court went on to hold that where the 

case has become moot while on appeal by reason of the losing 

party's having entered into a settlement of the underlying 

controversy, that party "has voluntarily forfeited his legal 

remedy by the ordinary processes of appeal," and has "thereby surrender[ed] his claim for the equitable remedy of vacatur." Id.

In this case, the losing parties, appellees, elected not to 

seek further relief upon the entry of our order. That places 

them squarely within the reasoning of U.S. Bancorp governing forfeiture of the right to vacatur. Indeed, the Court in 

U.S. Bancorp went on to say that the settled case "stands no 

differently than it would if jurisdiction were lacking because 

the losing party failed to appeal at all." Id. In our case, the 

appellees did not appeal. They accepted the effects of our 

emergency order. Granted, their time for doing otherwise 

was short. But established procedure provides for application to the Supreme Court for a stay of our emergency order. 

See 28 U.S.C. § 2101(f); SUP. CT. R. 23. They could have 

addressed the Circuit Justice for such a stay. They chose not 

to do so. Thus, "[t]his controversy did not become moot due 

to circumstances unattributable to any of the parties. The 

controversy ended when the losing party ... declined to 

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pursue its appeal." Karcher v. May, 484 U.S. 72, 83 (1987). 

In such a case, "the Munsingwear procedure is inapplicable...." Id.

We realize that this question is a close one. The best 

support for appellees' position lies not with the Supreme 

Court decisions in Munsingwear or U.S. Bancorp., but rather 

in our decision in Clarke v. United States, 915 F.2d 699 (D.C. 

Cir. 1990) (en banc). In Clarke, a panel of this court had 

upheld a district court decision invalidating, on constitutional 

grounds, a congressional limitation contained in an annual 

appropriations act of Congress for the District of Columbia. 

The panel issued its decision on September 26, 1989. The 

appropriations act in question, as extended, expired on November 20, 1989. Between the issuance of the mandate and 

the expiration of the act, the United States filed a petition for 

rehearing and a suggestion for rehearing en banc. Although 

the full court ultimately denied the suggestion to rehear the 

case en banc on the merits, it explicitly withheld issuance of 

that mandate "pending disposition by the en banc court" of a 

suggestion of mootness and motion to vacate filed by the 

United States between the November 20, 1989, lapse of the 

appropriations act and the December 15, 1989, decision not to 

rehear the case on the merits. Clarke v. United States, 898 

F.2d 161 (D.C. Cir. 1989) (per curiam) (en banc). Hearing 

the suggestion of mootness en banc, we then held that the 

mootness did not result from a "voluntary cessation" of the 

controversial conduct by the losing party, and that therefore, 

vacatur was in order under Munsingwear. Clarke, 915 F.2d 

at 706. That case is close to the present one. However, 

there is the critical difference that the United States, the 

losing litigant in Clarke, to whom we granted vacatur, had 

pursued the appellate route available to it for determination 

of the controversy until such time as circumstances beyond its 

control rendered the controversy moot. Not so here.

We further note that one aspect of Clarke may no longer be 

good law. In that case we supported our decision to grant 

vacatur in part because the precedent, as distinguished from 

preclusion, established by the existing judgment was made 

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1Of course as in the application of any of our panel opinions as 

precedent, adversely affected parties in future cases may seek the 

higher levels of review available from the court en banc and from 

the Supreme Court. 

unreviewable by circumstances beyond the control of the 

losing party. See id. This was never universally recognized 

as a valid reason for vacatur. While it is generally accepted 

that a mooted judgment should not preclude the litigants in 

future litigation, preclusion is not the same thing as stare 

decisis, and it is not self-evident that the precedential effects 

of a mooted judgment should be any less persuasive than if 

the mooting events had not occurred. Preclusion is normally 

based on a decision as to the controversy between the litigating parties. Precedent ordinarily is not. Precedent, more 

often than not, is drawn from cases not involving either of the 

parties for or against whom the precedent is offered.

As one commentator has pointed out, there is no particular 

reason to assume that a decision, later mooted, is any less 

valid as precedent than any other opinion of a court. "So 

long as the court believed that it was deciding a live controversy, its opinion was forged and tested in the same crucible 

as all opinions." 13A WRIGHT ET AL., FEDERAL PRACTICE AND 

PROCEDURE § 3533.10 (2d ed. 1984)1. While we operated on 

the opposite belief in Clarkethat is, that the precedential 

effect of a decision was a reason supporting vacaturthe 

Supreme Court has since come down on the other side in U.S. 

Bancorp. In fact, that case holds that the precedential power 

of an opinion is a reason arguing against vacatur. " "Judicial 

precedents are presumptively correct and valuable to the 

legal community as a whole. They are not merely the 

property of private litigants and should stand unless a court 

concludes that the public interest would be served by a 

vacatur.' " 513 U.S. at 26-27 (quoting Izumi Seimitsu Kogyo 

Kabushiki Kaisha v. U.S. Phillips Corp., 510 U.S. 27, 40 

(1993) (Stevens, J., dissenting)).

We do not read our decision in Coalition to End the 

Permanent Congress v. Runyan, 979 F.2d 219 (D.C. Cir. 

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2Even in Coalition, one member of the panel would have issued a 

precedential opinion, noting that "the single most important restraint on the decisions of judges is the tradition that we explain 

our decisions in writing." 979 F.2d at 221 (Silberman, J., dissenting). Nor is National Black Police Ass'n v. District of Columbia,

108 F.3d 346 (D.C. Cir. 1997), relied on by appellee, to the contrary. 

As appellee points out, that case held that vacatur served the "wellestablished principle that courts should avoid unnecessarily deciding 

constitutional questions." Id. at 353. However, that case became 

moot after the entry of the district court judgment but before 

decision by this court, as opposed to the situation now before us in 

which we reversed the district court's decision and then the case 

"became moot" when the relief we entered in favor of appellant 

became effective without further review. 

sult. In that case, a panel of this court had entered a 

judgment declaring a statute unconstitutional with the statement that the unpublished opinions accompanying the judgment would be replaced by "expanded opinions [that] will 

issue at a later date." Some months later, the court declined 

to issue the expanded opinions, noting that the statute in 

question had been repealed and the case was therefore moot. 

The panel made its decision expressly on grounds of "[p]rudence" noting that "local Rule 11(c) precludes citing as precedent" the unpublished judgment and summary opinions that 

accompanied it. Id. at 220. That opinion, being based as it 

was on prudence, does not purport to establish precedent for 

the full range of future cases.

The differences between Coalition and this case include the 

fact that there the only statute at issue had been repealed, 

while the regulations governing the use of Park Service 

property for demonstration remain as effective today as they 

were at the time of the issuance of our judgment and decision. 

There is, of course, also the fact that we have issued an 

opinion, while the panel in Coalition had not. We further 

note, significantly, that even that panel did not vacate its 

judgment, but only declined to establish further precedent.2

In this case, we conclude that the establishment of precedent 

argues against vacatur, not in favor of it. We conclude this, 

not only for the reasons set forth above on the authority of 

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U.S. Bancorp, but also because of the nature of this controversy as a prior restraint First Amendment case. For obvious practical reasons, such cases normally arise in the context 

of preliminary injunctions and appeals from their denial or 

grant. If government could by the expedient, of merely not 

challenging an adverse decision, cause its vacatur, the judicial 

system could seldom establish precedent governing future 

cases of prior restraint.

By way of comparison, consider New York Times Co. v. 

United States, 403 U.S. 713 (1971) (per curiam), the "Pentagon Papers" case. In that case, the government sought to 

enjoin two newspapers "from publishing the contents of a 

classified study entitled "History of U.S. Decision-Making 

Process on Viet Nam Policy,' " a topic of the utmost public 

interest at the time. Id. at 714. In a brief per curiam, the 

Supreme Court reaffirmed the principle that "any system of 

prior restraints of expression comes to this Court bearing a 

heavy presumption against its constitutional validity." Id.

(quoting Bantam Books, Inc. v. Sullivan, 372 U.S. 58, 70 

(1963)). Under the theory of appellees in the present case, 

the United States could have waited until the publication of 

the "Pentagon Papers" by the two news organizations, then 

filed a timely petition for rehearing, and obtained vacatur of 

the by-then moot decision of the Supreme Court. This 

illustrates our point that while prudence may have compelled 

the withholding of a published opinion in Coalition, it does 

not compel the vacatur of one already entered on the facts 

now before the court.

In further support of our decision that prudence does not 

compel vacatur, we note that the preclusive effect, as distinguished from the precedential effect, of our decision poses 

little risk of prejudice to the parties. As we have made clear 

throughout, the fact-specific elements of our opinion, essential 

to preclusive effect, as opposed to the general principles of 

law, applicable to the stare decisis effect, merely constitute 

findings in support of a preliminary injunction. In the unlikely event that these same parties again face each other in 

litigation involving a claim of issue preclusion based on this 

litigation, then that preliminary stage of this litigation would 

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be a factor for the future court to weigh in evaluating that 

argument. See Commodity Futures Trading Comm'n v. 

Board of Trade, 701 F.2d 653, 657-58 (7th Cir. 1983) (noting 

that findings in support of a preliminary injunction are tentative and that they therefore are generally unlikely to have a 

preclusive effect, but expressing belief that in that particular 

case they might). We also note that as our prior judgment 

resolved no disputed issues of fact whatsoever, the risk of any 

prejudice resulting from preclusion appears to be nil. Cf. 

Gjertsen v. Board of Elections, 751 F.2d 199, 202 (7th Cir.

1984) (noting that the preclusive effect of findings on a 

preliminary injunction varies with the procedural posture of 

specific cases). In short, insofar as the question of vacatur 

addresses prudential considerations, the heavy weight of 

precedential value greatly exceeds the light, if existent, danger of unfair preclusive effect, which is to say it supports our 

decision to deny appellees' motion.

In sum, we hold that neither Clark nor any other precedent 

compels the remedy of vacatur sought by appellees. We 

further hold that the principles of Munsingwear and U.S. 

Bancorp compel denial of the motion to vacate. We do, 

however, note that any other relief which appellants may be 

seeking in this proceeding has become moot, and our mandate 

will reflect a dismissal of this appeal.

III.

Appellees' other ground for its petition for rehearing hardly bears discussion. Appellees, without authority, argue that 

because we did not grant the total relief sought by appellantsthat is, to allow up to 299 demonstratorswe could 

not grant the partial relief of allowing up to twenty-five 

demonstrators. In support of their argument, appellees offer 

a portion of the plaintiffs' prayer in the district court below 

seeking total relief, and argue that this is a bar to partial 

relief. Whether there could be any validity to that argument 

as a general proposition or not, in this case plaintiffs' prayer 

below included the plea "that by the order of the court the 

defendants be enjoined from arresting and/or prosecuting 

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Reverend Mahoney and the Christian Defense Coalition for 

their proposed demonstration on Pennsylvania Avenue sidewalk on Inaugural Day, 1997." Both the record below and 

the appellants' filings with us reflected the National Park 

Service regulation which allows for demonstrations of twentyfive or fewer persons without a permit. 36 C.F.R 

§ 7.96(g)(2)(i). While appellants would certainly have been 

better pleased had we allowed their primary plea to reinstate 

their permit arguably improperly revoked by defendant appellees, as we stated in our original opinion, the imminent 

timing of the parade and the complexity of the issue made it 

impractical for us to reach that question. We therefore 

granted the partial relief to which they were plainly entitled 

without further pause. Appellees' argument that we cannot 

grant part of the relief prayed without granting all is not only 

without authority, it is without logical support.

For the reasons set forth above, we deny the petition for 

rehearing and the motion for vacatur. Insofar as appellants' 

appeal remains pending, we order it dismissed.

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