Opinion ID: 4544014
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: this case is moot

Text: 1. Standing and mootness allocate different jurisdictional burdens. Article III gives federal courts jurisdiction over “Cases” and “Controversies.” U.S. Const. art. III, § 2, cl. 1. Thus, federal courts can entertain actions only if they present live disputes, ones in which both sides have a personal stake. Summers v. Earth Island Inst., 555 U.S. 488, 492–93 (2009). At the start of litigation, the burden rests on the plaintiff, “as the party invoking federal jurisdiction,” to show its standing to sue. Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins, 136 S. Ct. 1540, 1547 (2016). That 6 requires showing injury in fact, causation, and redressability. Id. But once the plaintiff shows standing at the outset, she need not keep doing so throughout the lawsuit. Instead, the burden shifts. If the defendant (or any party) claims that some development has mooted the case, it bears “[t]he ‘heavy burden of persua[ding]’ the court” that there is no longer a live controversy. Friends of the Earth, Inc. v. Laidlaw Envtl. Servs. (TOC), Inc., 528 U.S. 167, 189 (2000) (quoting United States v. Concentrated Phosphate Exp. Ass’n, 393 U.S. 199, 203 (1968)). In other words, mootness is not just “the doctrine of standing set in a time frame.” Id. at 189–90 (quoting Arizonans for Official English v. Arizona, 520 U.S. 43, 68 n.22 (1997)). Standing and mootness are “two distinct justiciability doctrines.” Freedom from Religion Found., 832 F.3d at 475–76. So sometimes a suit filed on Monday will be able to proceed even if, because of a development on Tuesday, the suit would have been dismissed for lack of standing if it had been filed on Wednesday. The Tuesday development does not necessarily moot the suit. 2. Voluntary cessation does not always trigger mootness. One scenario in which we are reluctant to declare a case moot is when the defendant argues mootness because of some action it took unilaterally after the litigation began. This situation is often called “[v]oluntary cessation,” and it “will moot a case only if it is ‘absolutely clear that the allegedly wrongful behavior could not reasonably be expected to recur.’ ” Fields v. Speaker of the Pa. House of Representatives, 936 F.3d 142, 161 (3d Cir. 2019) (quoting Parents Involved in Cmty. Sch. v. Seattle Sch. Dist. No. 1, 551 U.S. 701, 719 (2007)). When a 7 plaintiff seeks declaratory relief, a defendant arguing mootness must show that there is no reasonable likelihood that a declaratory judgment would affect the parties’ future conduct. See, e.g., Rhodes v. Stewart, 488 U.S. 1, 4 (1988) (per curiam); United States v. Gov’t of the V.I., 363 F.3d 276, 285 (3d Cir. 2004). Voluntary cessation cases highlight the important difference between standing (at the start of a suit) and mootness (mid-suit). The shift in the burden of proof from plaintiff to defendant matters. It means that sometimes, “the prospect that a defendant will engage in (or resume) harmful conduct may be too speculative to support standing, but not too speculative to overcome mootness.” Friends of the Earth, 528 U.S. at 190. While the case law speaks largely of voluntary cessation, these principles apply even when the defendant’s cessation is not entirely voluntary. Take Doe v. City of Albuquerque, 667 F.3d 1111 (10th Cir. 2012). The City of Albuquerque had forbidden sex offenders to use public libraries. Id. at 1116. An affected sex offender sued and won an injunction, so the City started letting sex offenders use its libraries. Id. at 1117 & n.5. But that did not moot the case. Though the City had complied for the time being, it “forcefully maintained the constitutionality of the enjoined [policy]” and planned to reinstate it in the future. Id. at 1117 n.5; see also DeJohn v. Temple Univ., 537 F.3d 301, 310 (3d Cir. 2008). Yet if the City’s attitude had been different, the answer to the mootness question could well have differed too. See DeJohn, 537 F.3d at 310. What was important was whether the City could reasonably be expected to engage in the challenged behavior again. Friends of the Earth, 528 8 U.S. at 189. That is always the key question, no matter why the defendant ceased its behavior. To be sure, the defendant’s reason for changing its behavior is often probative of whether it is likely to change its behavior again. We will understandably be skeptical of a claim of mootness when a defendant yields in the face of a court order and assures us that the case is moot because the injury will not recur, yet maintains that its conduct was lawful all along. See Knox v. SEIU, Local 1000, 567 U.S. 298, 307 (2012); see also 13C Charles Alan Wright, Arthur R. Miller, & Edward H. Cooper, Federal Practice and Procedure § 3533.5, at 248 (3d ed. 2008). On the other hand, if the defendant ceases because of a new statute or a ruling in a completely different case, its argument for mootness is much stronger. See, e.g., Lighthouse Inst. for Evangelism, Inc. v. City of Long Branch, 510 F.3d 253, 260 (3d Cir. 2007); Khodara Envtl., Inc. ex rel. Eagle Envtl., L.P. v. Beckman, 237 F.3d 186, 193 (3d Cir. 2001) (Alito, J.). In short, the touchstone of the voluntary-cessation doctrine is not how willingly the defendant changed course. Rather, the focus is on whether the defendant made that change unilaterally and so may “return to [its] old ways” later on. Friends of the Earth, 528 U.S. at 189 (quoting City of Mesquite v. Aladdin’s Castle, Inc., 455 U.S. 283, 289 n.10 (1982)). Perhaps it would be more accurate to call it the volitional-cessation doctrine. Though voluntary or volitional cessation is often described as an exception to mootness, that is not quite right. The burden always lies on the party claiming mootness, whether the case involves voluntary cessation or not. See Friends of the Earth, 9 528 U.S. at 189. Voluntary cessation is just a recurring situation in which courts are particularly skeptical of mootness arguments. That is why, in voluntary-cessation cases, defendants’ burden of showing mootness is heavy. Id.
likelihood that the unions will seek to collect agency fees in the future The facts here present an especially strong case of mootness by voluntary cessation. Until Janus, the unions had every reason to believe, under Abood, that they could collect agency fees from nonmembers. Once the Supreme Court changed course in Janus, the unions immediately stopped collecting agency fees. And since Janus, they have conceded that Pennsylvania’s agency-fee arrangement violates the First Amendment and have forsworn collecting fees from nonmembers. So we see no reasonable likelihood that the unions will try to collect agency fees from the teachers ever again. Cf. Knox, 567 U.S. at 307– 08 (finding a similar challenge not moot because the defendant union insisted that agency fees were constitutional). Thus, the unions have borne their “formidable burden of showing that it is absolutely clear [that] the allegedly wrongful behavior could not reasonably be expected to recur.” Friends of the Earth, 528 U.S. at 190. In response, the teachers cite other unions’ collective-bargaining agreements that have, even after Janus, included agency-fee language. We are unmoved. For one, the mootness inquiry focuses on the parties before us. A court can enter a declaratory judgment “if, and only if, it affects the behavior of the defendant toward the plaintiff.” Rhodes, 488 U.S. at 4 (per 10 curiam). And the mere presence of language in contracts causes no harm. The teachers neither show nor even allege that any public-sector union in Pennsylvania has tried to enforce those provisions since Janus. C. Decisions allowing other constitutional challenges to go forward are irrelevant In trying to salvage this litigation, the teachers cite other constitutional challenges that have proceeded even after a landmark Supreme Court decision changed the lay of the land. They take this as evidence that a challenge to a state’s statute necessarily survives the invalidation of another state’s equivalent. But our mootness inquiry is not guided by broad rules like this one; it depends on the particular facts of each case. And the cases they invoke are inapposite. For instance, the teachers note that even after the Supreme Court decided Citizens United, lower courts kept striking down campaign-finance statutes whose unconstitutionality had become clear. See Citizens United v. FEC, 558 U.S. 310, 365–66 (2010). But that was a complex decision striking down a specific set of federal campaign-finance laws. So it is no surprise that there were still open questions about how it applied to many federal, state, and local campaign-finance rules. Indeed, it does not appear that the litigants even suggested mootness in the post-Citizens United cases cited by the teachers. Here, however, no one questions whether public-sector unions can still collect agency fees from nonmembers. It is simple: agency-fee arrangements were allowed by Abood, then banned by Janus. Neither party has advanced any reason why 11 the Pennsylvania law might escape Janus’s broad holding that “public-sector agency-shop arrangements violate the First Amendment” and thus that “States and public-sector unions may no longer extract agency fees from nonconsenting employees.” 138 S. Ct. at 2478, 2486. The teachers also cite challenges to laws related to samesex marriage after Obergefell v. Hodges, 135 S. Ct. 2584 (2015). But the main case they cite went beyond Obergefell, addressing not just whether same-sex couples could marry but whether states had to afford them all the incidental benefits of marriage. See Waters v. Ricketts, 798 F.3d 682, 685–86 (8th Cir. 2015) (per curiam). That case noted that Obergefell had not spoken to the validity of all marriage-benefits laws. Id. By contrast, Janus declared unequivocally that collecting agency fees from nonmembers is unconstitutional, and we see no lingering subsidiary questions. See 138 S. Ct. at 2478, 2486. At the very least, none are presented here. D. Because this case no longer presents a live controversy, the District Court was correct to dismiss it Finally, the teachers argue that dismissal for mootness was not the right disposition. According to them, once the parties agreed that the challenged statutes were unconstitutional and that there were no more factual disputes, the District Court should have declared the Pennsylvania statute unconstitutional. Not so. The lack of any disagreement between the parties over the facts or the law, and the lack of any continuing injury 12 to the teachers, is precisely what makes the case moot. And once that happens, any declaratory judgment would be an advisory opinion. The teachers thus err in insisting that the case remains alive because a court could still grant them “effectual relief.” Appellants’ Br. 14 (quoting Knox, 567 U.S. at 307). A live controversy requires not only the possibility of awarding relief, but also a real dispute between the parties about the facts or the law. There is no such dispute here. We understand that the teachers might rest more easily if a court declared 71 Pa. Stat. § 575(b) unconstitutional. But the federal courts are not “roving commissions” charged with scrubbing invalid laws from the statute books. Broadrick v. Oklahoma, 413 U.S. 610, 610–11 (1973). Instead, we will await a case where the parties earnestly dispute the validity or enforceability of Pennsylvania’s agency-fee statute. Because this is not that case, there was nothing for the District Court to do other than dismiss it as moot. It correctly did so.