Stagg, P.C. v. U.S. Department of State, No. 19-811 (2d Cir. 2020)
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The Second Circuit vacated the district court's grant of summary judgment for the Department on Stagg's challenge to the constitutionality of a speech licensing requirement imposed by the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR). The district court concluded that the ITAR's licensing requirement unambiguously did not apply to the categories of speech that Stagg's complaint asserted an intention to undertake, and thus the question whether the provision would be unconstitutional in some applications is moot because none of those provisions applies to what Stagg alleges it intends to do.
The court agreed that Stagg's intended conduct is not subject to the ITAR's licensing requirement. Furthermore, the court concluded that this finding rendered Stagg's constitutional challenges moot. In this case, as a result of the district court's and this court's rulings on the ambiguous inapplicability of the ITAR license requirement to Stagg's intended actions, Stagg has no personal stake in its suit and thus fails the test of Article III jurisdiction. Therefore, the court dismissed the district court's judgment and directed that the action be dismissed.
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