| Venue: | SCOTUS |
| Facts: | DeFunis is denied admission to U of WA law school. He sues, saying the decision was race-based. Trial court agrees, so he begins school while all kinds of appeals go on. By this point, he's in his last quarter of school. |
| Posture: | Victory at trial. Reversed by WA SC, petition for cert. Fed circuit stays the WA SC judgment, waiting for final resolution from SCOTUS. |
| Issue: | Is this case moot? |
| Holding: | Yes. WA SC judgment vacated. |
| Rule: | Federal courts are not empowered to decide questions that can't affect the rights of the litigants before them. |
| Reasoning: | Mootness is a question that must be resolved before a federal court
assumes jurisdiction. If the case or controversy has ceased to
be definite and concrete, or no longer touches the legal relations
of the parties having adverse interests, it's moot. There are
no consequences to this decision: DeFunis will finish school
either way (says U of WA), so there's no need to rule on this.
And this isn't capable of repetition, because DeFunis will never again have to apply for admission to law school. Lucky for us that he sued on his own behalf only, and not on behalf of the class of people affected by this policy. |
| Dicta: | Dissent: (Brennan) actually, there are lots of ways that DeFunis might not finish school. And people have spent an awful lot of effort briefing this-- it's a waste not to decide it, especially since we'll have to at some point, given the level of interest. |