Court Opinion

ID: 9427843
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:22:05.176246+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:18:08.082024
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Blackmun,
dissenting.
I agree with Mr. Justice Stewart that this case is not properly before us. I write separately to express my own reasons for reaching that conclusion.
The claimed harm that gave birth to this lawsuit was the alleged deprivation of liberty attending appellee’s transfer to the Lincoln Regional Center. It is clear to me that that asserted injury disappeared, at the latest, when appellee was *502granted parole.1 Cf. Preiser v. Newkirk, 422 U. S. 395 (1975). So did any immediate threat that that injury would be suffered again. Appellee has been returned to custody, however, and the *503parties agree that his reincarceration, coupled with his history of mental problems, has brought the controversy back to life.
Given these facts, the issue is not so much , one of mootness as one of ripeness. At most, although I think otherwise, it is a case presenting a “mixed question” of ripeness and mootness, hinging on the possibility that the challenged procedures will be applied again to appellee. This Court has confronted mixed questions of this kind in cases presenting issues “capable of repetition, yet evading review,” see, e. g., Nebraska Press Assn. v. Stuart, 427 U. S. 539 (1976), and Sosna v. Iowa, 419 U. S. 393 (1975), and in cases concerning the cessation of challenged conduct during the pendency of litigation, see, e. g., Walling v. Helmerich & Payne, Inc., 323 U. S. 37, 43 (1944). In those contexts, the Court has lowered the ripeness threshold so as to preclude manipulation by the parties or the mere passage of time from frustrating judicial review. Mr. Justice Stewart correctly observes, and the Court apparently concedes, however, that the “capable of repetition” doctrine does not apply here. Neither does the liberal rule applied in “voluntary cessation” cases, since the current state of affairs is in no way the product of the appellants’ voluntary discontinuation of their challenged conduct.2 Certainly it is not the result of any effort on the part of the appellants to avoid review by this Court. Thus, since these mixed mootness/ ripeness rules are inapplicable, this case presents for me nothing more than a plain, old-fashioned question of ripeness.3
*504The Court’s cases lay down no mechanistic test for determining whether a dispute is ripe for adjudication. But past formulations are uniformly more rigorous than the one the Court now applies. The Court has observed that “[p]ast exposure to illegal conduct does not in itself show a present case or controversy,” O’Shea v. Littleton, 414 U. S. 488, 495 (1974), and that “general assertions or inferences” that illegal conduct will recur do not render a case ripe. Id., at 497. “A hypothetical threat is not enough.” Public Workers v. Mitchell, 330 U. S. 75, 90 (1947). There must be “actual present or. immediately threatened injury resulting from unlawful governmental action.” Laird v. Tatum, 408 U. S. 1, 15 (1972). See Linda R. S. v. Richard D., 410 U. S. 614, 617 (1973) (requiring “some threatened or actual injury”); Massachusetts v. Mellon, 262 U. S. 447, 488 (1923) (requiring that the litigant “has sustained or is immediately in danger of sustaining some direct injury”). A “substantial controversy, between parties having adverse legal interests, of sufficient immediacy and reality” is required. Golden v. Zwickler, 394 U. S. 103, 108 (1969), quoting Maryland Casualty Co. v. Pacific Coal & Oil Co., 312 U. S. 270, 273 (1941).
*505Applying these principles, I have difficulty in perceiving an existing “case or controversy” here. Since our remand, the state officials have indicated nothing more than that they have a general right to apply their statute, and to apply it to appellee if necessary.4 They have not expressed a present intent or desire to transfer appellee to a mental facility pursuant to the challenged provisions. Nor have they suggested that they may transfer appellee to the Lincoln Regional Center now on the basis of the diagnosis made five years ago. And they have not suggested that they would subject appellee immediately to a “fresh” psychiatric evaluation if the District Court’s injunction were lifted. The appellee has represented that he “does not reside in the psychiatric unit of the Nebraska Penal and Correctional Complex, nor is he receiving or accepting psychiatric treatment.” Brief for Appellee 11-12. The brief containing that statement was filed some six months ago and some nine months after the revocation of appellee’s parole.
In sum, for all that appears, appellee has been assimilated once again into the general prison population, and appellants, at least at this time, are content to leave him where he is.5 Given these facts, determining whether prison officials within two years again will seek to send appellee to a mental institu*506tion “takes us into the area of speculation and conjecture.” O’Shea v. Littleton, 414 U. S., at 497. Cf. Longshoremen v. Boyd, 347 U. S. 222 (1954).
It is for these reasons that I would vacate the judgment of the District Court and remand the case to that court with directions to dismiss the complaint.

 The Court does not appear to share this view. It states that, even while at the Veterans’ Administration Hospital, appellee Jones “insisted that he was receiving treatment for mental illness against his will.” Ante, at 486. It adds that appellee was “paroled, but only on condition that he accept psychiatric treatment.” Ibid. The Court does not identify the precise import of these facts, but a fair inference is that they are meant to suggest that this case — even during the time of appellee’s parole— might properly have been pursued on the theory that the appellee was continuing to feel the effects of the alleged deprivation of constitutional rights in receiving in-patient care at the Veterans’ Administration Hospital.
I cannot accept this suggestion. First, its premise appears to be faulty. The District Court did not find, and it does not appear clearly in the record, that the parole board’s offer or appellee’s acceptance of parole was in any way related to his prior transfer to the Lincoln Regional Center. Appellee chose to accept conditional parole. Moreover, at the time appellee elected to go on parole, he was being housed at the penal complex, not at the Lincoln Regional Center. Thus, it is not surprising that the District Court based its finding of nonmootness solely on its conclusion that appellee — notwithstanding his conditioned release — was “under threat of being transferred to the state mental hospital under § 83-180.” App. to Juris. Statement 24. Second, the “continuing injury” theory seems to me to be incorrect as a matter of law. Appellee did not seek or evince any interest in seeking release from the Veterans’ Administration Hospital, and a declaration that his initial transfer had been illegal would have neither justified nor predictably led to appellee's removal from that facility. In other words, after accepting the conditional grant of parole, appellee could no longer show, as required by the case-or-controversy requirement, “that he personafiy would benefit in a tangible way from the court’s intervention.” Warth v. Seldin, 422 U. S. 490, 508 (1975).
The Court also finds some support for its holding in the fact that vacating the District Court’s order would remove the declaration that the challenged procedures “afforded an inadequate basis for declaring Jones to be mentally ill.” Ante, at 487. If the Court, by this statement, means to imply that appellee’s suit is somehow mootness-proof due to the continuing stigma resulting from the transfer to the mental hospital, I cannot accept that sweeping proposition. The Court has never suggested that the “collateral consequences” doctrine of Sibron v. New York, 392 U. S. 40 (1968), which saves an action challenging the validity of a con*503viction after a prisoner has served his sentence, also saves a challenge to a commitment by a patient who has been released from a mental hospital. Nor does the logic of Sibron — focusing on tangible and remediable collateral consequences, such as use of a prior conviction to enhance a sentence for a later crime, or to impeach credibility if one appears as a witness— comfortably extend to the claim of a former mental patient. See id., at 55 (referring to “adverse collateral legal consequences”).

 The decisions to award and revoke parole were made by the Nebraska Parole Board, not by appellants.

 It is not clear whether the Court views this as a “voluntary cessation” case. It nowhere expressly relies on the doctrine and does not explain *504what factors might justify characterizing appellee’s present situation as the result of voluntary cessation of illegal conduct by appellants. On the other hand, each of the three decisions cited by the Court to support its application of a “creampuff” ripeness standard, County of Los Angeles v. Davis, 440 U. S. 625, 631 (1979); United States v. Phosphate Export Assn., 393 U. S. 199, 203 (1968); United States v. W. T. Grant Co., 345 U. S. 629, 633 (1953), pivoted on the presence of “voluntary cessation.” It is therefore unclear whether the Court deems this a “voluntary cessation” case (without explaining why) or deems the “no reasonable expectation of recurrence” standard — to date a litmus carefully confined by a policy-tailored and principled “voluntary cessation” rule — applicable to an amorphous cluster of facts having nothing to do with parties’ artful dodging of well-founded litigation. In either event, the Court’s analysis invites the criticism, increasingly voiced, that this Court’s decisions on threshold issues “are concealed decisions on the merits of the underlying constitutional claim.” Tushnet, The New Law of Standing: A Plea for Abandonment, 62 Cornell L. Rev. 663 (1977).

 Appellants, to be sure, have announced their intention to continue to use the challenged procedures. That fact, however, is of small, if any, significance, for it is hardly surprising to hear state oficials say that they plan to abide by the State’s own laws. See Public Workers v. Mitchell, 330 U. S. 75, 91 (1947) (“the existence of the law and the regulations” does not alone render a suit ripe). Cf. Poe v. Ullman, 367 U. S. 497 (1961) (desuetude statute).

 I do not go so far as Mr. Justice Stewart does when he says that appellee is “simply one of thousands of Nebraska prisoners.” Ante, at 501. For purposes of the "case or controversy” requirement, appellee differs from his fellow inmates in two relevant respects: he has a recent history of perceived psychiatric problems, and in fact he was previously transferred pursuant to the challenged statutes. Cf. O’Shea v. Littleton, 414 U. S., at 496 (“Of course, past wrongs are evidence bearing on whether there is a real and immediate threat of repeated injury”).