Justicability (Standing, Injury, Ripeness and Mootness)

Question 1

Mootness Exceptions:

1. Class-action-representative exception

Answer 1

If a plaintiff is a representative member in a class-action lawsuit and that plaintiff’s individual claim becomes moot, a court will adjudicate the matter provided that there are other class members who still have pending claims.

A class action is not moot, and the class representative may continue to pursue it-even if the representative’s own controversy has become moot-because the claims of others in the class are still viable.

Example:
This exception often turns up in a fact pattern involving a class action brought by incarcerated persons challenging some aspect of the conditions of their incarceration. During the action’s pendency, the class representative is released from incarceration, thereby mooting the representative’s claim.

Question 2

A state law provides that all persons who have been residents of the state for more than three years shall be entitled to free tuition at the state’s main university. It further provides that persons who have resided in the state for three years or less shall pay the nonresident tuition rate, which is significantly higher. A student at the state’s university who had been a state resident for less than three years filed a class action in federal court on behalf of himself and other similarly situated university students, seeking a declaration that the state statute is unconstitutional. When the case came to trial, the student had been a resident of the state for more than three years and was no longer required to pay tuition. By that time, a number of amicus curiae briefs had been filed in the case, some supporting and some opposing the student’s position. Nevertheless, the state moved to dismiss the case as moot.

Should the state’s motion to dismiss be granted?

Answer 2

No, because there is a live controversy.

Question 6

Mootness Exception 2:
Capable of repetition yet evading review exception

Answer 6

If an event is recurring but will always evade review, the court will address the issue anyway (otherwise, the issue may never be resolved)

Capable of repetition yet evading review exception applies only in situations where litigation is unlikely to be completed because of the short-term nature of an issue, such as review of an explicitly short-term legal mandate.

Question 7

Mootness Exception 3:

The voluntary cessation exception