Court Opinion

ID: 9499294
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 17:43:50.799854+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:59:24.381514
License: Public Domain

ROGERS, Circuit Judge,
concurring and dissenting.
I join the majority in concluding that the civil action that plaintiffs brought against the Tennessee Senate and the Lieutenant Governor and Speaker of the Senate is now moot. I dissent because vacatur is appropriate in this context.
Focusing exclusively on “fault and public interest,” in my view, ignores an important element of the vacatur analysis, namely intent. When evaluating whether to vacate district court opinions in moot cases, courts focus on the motives of the party that caused mootness. See, e.g., Russman v. Bd. of Educ., 260 F.3d 114, 122 (2d Cir.2001) (finding that for “conduct to constitute ‘forfeiture’ of the benefit of vacatur ... we believe [that the party that caused the case to become moot] must have intended the appeal to become moot, either in the sense that mootness was his purpose or that he knew or should have known that his conduct was substantially likely to moot the appeal.”); Am. Games, Inc. v. Trade Prods., Inc., 142 F.3d 1164, 1168 (9th Cir.1998) (“[T]he district court should consider the motives of the party whose voluntary actions mooted the case.”). The need to focus on- intent is particularly great when a legislature caused a case to become moot. See Nat’l Black Police Ass’n v. District of Columbia, 108 F.3d 346, 351-53 (D.C.Cir.1997) (requiring proof “that the legislation was enacted in order to overturn an unfavorable precedent”). A legislature “may act out of reasons totally independent of the pending lawsuit or because the lawsuit has convinced it that the existing law is flawed,” and constitutional concerns “should make [courts] wary of impugning the motivations that underlie a legislature’s actions.” Id. at 352; see also Khodara Envtl., Inc. v. Beckman, 237 F.3d 186, 195 (3d Cir.2001) (Alito, J.).
In this case, there simply is no evidence that the defendants acted with the intent to moot Ford’s civil action against them. To the contrary, when voting on the Ad Hoc Committee’s recommendations, defendants were probably not even aware that they were relinquishing the right to raise defenses in future cases, and the mere fact that the defendants mooted the case approximately two and a half months after the district court granted declaratory relief is insufficient to raise an inference of an intent to vacate the case. See Am. Games, Inc., 142 F.3d at 1166 (no intent even though the case became moot while pending on appeal); Khodara, 237 F.3d at 186, 192, 195 (finding no intent even though case became moot less than two months after oral arguments).
Additional public interest concerns support vacatur. First, while it is normally inappropriate to base a decision on whether to vacate a mooted case on assumptions about the merits of that case, here Ford conceded that the Tennessee Senate was not a proper party to the lawsuit. See Blankenship v. Blackwell, 429 F.3d 254, *508258 (6th Cir.2005). The public interest in res judicata diminishes when all parties agree that the district court erred. Second, the district court explicitly declined to address defendants’ sovereign immunity argument.
I conclude by noting the limited issue-preclusion and claim-preclusion reach of the district court’s decision. First, the district court’s opinion does not preclude defendants from raising similar arguments in future cases against other plaintiffs. United States v. Mendoza, 464 U.S. 154, 104 S.Ct. 568, 78 L.Ed.2d 379 (1984); Idaho Potato Comm. v. G & T Terminal Packaging, Inc., 425 F.3d 708, 713-14 (9th Cir.2005) (applying the Mendoza holding to state actors); Hercules Carriers, Inc. v. Claimant State of Florida, Dep’t of Transp., 768 F.2d 1558, 1578-79 (11th Cir.1985) (same). Second, in future cases that plaintiffs in this case bring, plaintiffs cannot rely on the district court’s decisions of “unmixed questions of law” in “successive actions involving unrelated subject matter[s].” United States v. Stauffer Chem. Co., 464 U.S. 165, 171, 104 S.Ct. 575, 78 L.Ed.2d 388 (1984) (quoting Montana v. United States, 440 U.S. 147, 162, 99 S.Ct. 970, 59 L.Ed.2d 210 (1979)). Third, case law appears to support the conclusion that res judicata would not prevent defendants from raising sovereign immunity in subsequent litigation with the plaintiffs in this case, particularly given the terse treatment in the district court’s opinion. See Jordon v. Gilligan, 500 F.2d 701, 710 (6th Cir.1974); Pacific Rock Corp. v. Perez, 2005 Guam 15, 2005 WL 2508136 (No. CIVA 03-010, Oct. 11, 2005); but see United States v. County of Cook, Ill., 167 F.3d 381, 389-90 (7th Cir.1999).