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Page Number: 54.0

16 

MOORE v. HARPER 

THOMAS, J., dissenting 

free to condition the effectiveness of a change in state law 
on external events, including this Court’s actions in cases 
properly before it.  But, as should be obvious, such a trigger 
provision cannot be the entire basis of an Article III case or 
controversy.    Where,  as  here,  the  Court  cannot  affect  the 
adjudicated rights and liabilities of the parties in the case 
below, a state legislature cannot manufacture a justiciable
controversy by providing that state law will change in some 
way depending on how this Court answers a moot question. 
That  would  simply  be  a  roundabout  way  of  asking  this
Court  to  render  an  advisory  opinion.    But  “federal  courts 
cannot give answers simply because someone asks.”  Uzueg-
bunam, 592 U. S., at ___ (ROBERTS, C. J., dissenting) (slip 
op., at 12).  That is true when the request comes from Con-
gress, see Muskrat v. United States, 219 U. S. 346, 360–361 
(1911), and it is equally true when the request comes from 
a state legislature.7 
—————— 
Sess. Laws 3, p. 10, §2.  The majority’s reading is based on three suppo-
sitions that it does not justify.  The first is that this provision has any 
reference at all to events after the 2022 elections, to which the remedial 
Act was exclusively directed.  The second is that the dependent clause 
following “unless” is applicable even though, under the main clause, the 
remedial  plan  was  never  “adopt[ed]”  by  the  trial  court  and  thus  never 
became “effective.”  The third is that Harper III did not “otherwise . . . 
ma[ke]” Harper I “inoperable, or ineffective.” 

7 The idea of deciding an issue to determine whether a statute shall be 
effective is not unprecedented, but the precedents do not aid the major-
ity.  At times, state legislatures have enacted laws contingent on state-
court opinions approving their constitutionality—in fact, such legislation 
produced the first two opinions addressing the Elections Clause question 
here (which both reached the opposite conclusion from today’s majority). 
See  Act  No.  5,  1863  Vt.  Acts  &  Resolves  p.  7,  approved,  Opinion  of 
Judges, 37 Vt. 665 (1864); 1864 N. H. Laws p. 3061, approved, In re Opin-
ions of Justices, 45 N. H. 595 (1864); see also In re Plurality Elections, 15 
R. I. 617, 8 A. 881 (1887) (similar situation and conclusion).  Those opin-
ions have always been understood as “advisory opinions.”  See, e.g., In re 
Constitutionality of House Bill 88, 115 Vt. 524, 528–529, 64 A. 2d 169, 
171–172 (1949); Goodell v. Judith Basin County, 70 Mont. 222, 231, 224