holding that an issue is moot when it has “lost its character as a present, live controversy of the kind that must exist if we are to avoid [rendering] advisory opinions on abstract propositions of law.”
How later courts described this case
- holding that an issue is moot when it has “lost its character as a present, live controversy of the kind that must exist if we are to avoid [rendering] advisory opinions on abstract propositions of law.”
- holding that “speculative contingencies afford no basis for our passing on the substantive issues the appellants would have us decide with respect to the now-amended law of Colorado” (citations omitted)
- holding that a case becomes moot whenever it “los[es] its character as a present, live controversy of the kind that must exist if we are to avoid advisory opinions on abstract propositions of law”
- reflecting the effect of an amendment by the Colorado legislature to establish a two-month residency requirement for voting rather than a six-month residency requirement, and that “nothing in the Colorado legislative scheme as now written adversely affects either [the complaining parties’] present interests or their interests at the time this litigation was commenced”
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
Mr. Justice Brennan,
dissenting.
I dissent from the direction to dismiss this case as moot. Moore v. Ogilvie, 394 U. S. 814 (1969), involved a challenge to the constitutionality of a statute which had been invoked to deny the appellants a place on the 1968 ballot. We were not persuaded in that case by the argument that the appeal should be dismissed since the 1968 election had been held and there was no possibility of granting any relief to appellants. Even though appellants did not allege they would seek a place on the ballot at future elections, we held that the constitutional question was one “capable of repetition, yet evading review,” Southern Pacific Terminal Co. v. ICC, 219 U. S. 498, 515 (1911), and, therefore, that mootness would not prevent our decision of its merits. In my view the present case is an even stronger one for application of that principle. At stake here is the fundamental right to vote — the right “preservative of other basic civil and political rights,” Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U. S. 533, 562 (1964); see also Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections, 383 U. S. 663, 670 (1966), and the constitutional challenge of the amended Colorado statute is peculiarly evasive of review. This is because ordinarily a person’s standing to make that challenge would not mature unless he had become a Colorado resident within two months prior to a presidential election. Barring resort to extraordinary expedients, that interval is obviously too short for the exhaustion of state administrative remedies and the completion of a lawsuit through filing of the *51 complaint in a federal district court, convening of a three-judge court, trial, and review by this Court. * True, today’s virtual foreclosure of any opportunity for definitive judicial review may in some measure be prevented by resort to waiver of the requirement of exhaustion of administrative remedies, preferred calendar position, or even relaxation of the rules of ripeness to permit a person not yet a resident to challenge the statute on a showing of reasonable certainty that he would be moving to the State within the two-month period. But the difficulties which attend these expedients only buttress my conclusion that if mootness did not bar decision of the constitutional question in Moore v. Ogilvie , there is even more reason to hold that mootness does not bar decision of the constitutional question presented here.
Reaching the merits, I would reverse for the reasons stated by Mr. Justice Marshall in his dissenting opinion, which I join.
The proceedings would probably require even more time if the plaintiff sued in state court, for review in this Court would come only after one or more levels of state appellate review.