Court Opinion

ID: 9492343
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 14:38:57.812896+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:55:15.705369
License: Public Domain

SILVERMAN, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
Although the majority makes a persuasive argument that this case does not arise under federal common law for purposes of § 1331, the question is not open-and-shut. In fact, in 1987, our very able colleague, Judge A. Wallace Tashima, then a district judge, considered this issue and came to the contrary conclusion. All Mission Indian Hous. Auth. v. Silvas, 680 F.Supp. 330 (C.D.Cal.1987).
What is open-and-shut is that the case is moot. The tenant in this eviction action died during the pendency of the appeal. There is no longer anyone to evict. The case is not saved from mootness by the fact that OVIHA also pled a claim for back *1035rent. No estate has been substituted for the decedent, nor is there any basis in the record to believe that an estate has been opened, will be opened, or even that the decedent had any survivors. Furthermore, no judgment was entered against the defendant; this case was dismissed at the default hearing stage. In any event, as of now, there is no defendant in this ease.
Right or wrong, today’s holding will have serious ramifications. Although OV-IHA is required by Congress to establish “satisfactory procedures designed to assure the prompt payment and collection of rents and the prompt processing of evictions in the case of non-payment of rent[,]” 42 U.S.C. § 1437d(c)(4)(B), the majority’s decision leaves OVIHA with absolutely no forum in which to fulfill that statutory obligation. And it does this in a litigation setting in which there has been no input from either the Bishop Tribe or the United States government.
This does not mean that the majority’s conclusion is necessarily wrong. But it does suggest that the court should hesitate to reach out to decide a murky question of this magnitude — in a case that did not lend itself to the consideration of the views of other significantly affected parties — when an alternative jurisdictional basis is indisputably clear. Judicial restraint does not mean ducking hard questions. It means that generally speaking, “federal courts should exercise the least possible power adequate to the end proposed.” Stone v. City and County of San Francisco, 968 F.2d 850, 861 (9th Cir.1992) (internal quotation marks and citations omitted).
I agree that this appeal must be dismissed, but on the ground that it has become moot. I would reserve for another day whether the complaint raised a federal question under § 1331.