Opinion ID: 811878
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Choosing the Threshold Issue

Text: The mootness issue implicates our subject matter jurisdiction. See Rio Grande Silvery Minnow v. Bureau of Reclamation, 601 F.3d 1096, 1109 (10th Cir. 2010). The Supreme Court has instructed that federal courts may not assume they have subject matter jurisdiction for the purpose of deciding claims on the merits. Steel Co. v. Citizens for a Better Environment, 523 U.S. 83, 94-95 (1998). But “a federal court has leeway to choose among threshold grounds for denying audience to a case on the merits.” Sinochem Int’l Co. v. Malay. Int’l Shipping Corp., 549 U.S. 422, 431 (2007). Federal courts may choose to avoid difficult subject matter jurisdiction questions and dispose of a case on a “threshold, nonmerits issue,” such as forum non conveniens grounds, so long as resolving the issue “does not entail any assumption by the court of substantive law-declaring power.” Id. at 433, 436 (quotations omitted). Mr. Valenzuela’s habeas petition is not one of the “mine run of cases” involving “no arduous inquiry” into subject matter jurisdiction. See id. at 436 (quotations omitted). The mootness question presents difficult issues such as whether tribal court convictions are entitled to a presumption of collateral consequences and whether federal courts have authority under 25 U.S.C. § 1303 to vacate tribal court convictions. We may avoid these difficult issues by disposing of Mr. Valenzuela’s appeal on a threshold issue without reaching the merits. See Kelley v. City of Albuquerque, 542 F.3d 802, 817 n.15 (10th Cir. 2008) (choosing threshold, nonmerits determination over difficult “first-impression jurisdictional question”); Long Term Care Partners, LLC v. United States, 516 F.3d 225, 7 233 (4th Cir. 2008) (deciding case on nonjurisdictional, nonmerits issue “without first surmounting the jurisdictional hurdle of standing”). The district court’s determination that Mr. Valenzuela failed to exhaust tribal court remedies is such a threshold, nonmerits issue. See Gonzalez v. Crosby, 545 U.S. 524, 532 n.4 (2005) (describing denial of a habeas petition for failure to exhaust as a “ruling which precluded a merits determination”); Nat’l Farmers Union Ins. Cos. v. Crow Tribe of Indians, 471 U.S. 845, 856 (1985) (explaining that the tribal exhaustion rule allows for record development in tribal court “before either the merits or any question concerning appropriate relief is addressed”); see also Bryant v. Rich, 530 F.3d 1368, 1374 (11th Cir. 2008) (“[E]xhaustion is nothing more than a precondition to an adjudication on the merits.”). Because we agree with the district court that Mr. Valenzuela was required, but failed, to exhaust his tribal court remedies before filing his § 1303 petition, we take that “less burdensome course” to dispose of his appeal. Sinochem, 549 U.S. at 436.