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SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
_________________
No. 17–312
_________________
UNITED STATES, PETITIONER
v. RENE
SANCHEZ-GOMEZ, et al.
on writ of certiorari to the united states
court of appeals for the ninth circuit
[May 14, 2018]
Chief Justice Roberts delivered the opinion of
the Court.
Four criminal defendants objected to being bound
by full restraints during pretrial proceedings in their cases, but
the District Court denied relief. On appeal, the Court of Appeals
for the Ninth Circuit held that the use of such restraints was
unconstitutional, even though each of the four criminal cases had
ended prior to its decision. The question presented is whether the
appeals were saved from mootness either because the defendants
sought “class-like relief” in a “functional class action,” or
because the challenged practice was “capable of repetition, yet
evading review.”
I
It is the responsibility of the United States
Marshals Service to “provide for the security . . . of
the United States District Courts.” 28 U. S. C. §566(a).
To fulfill that duty, the United States Marshal for the Southern
District of California requested that the judges of that district
permit the use of full restraints on all in-custody defendants
during nonjury proceedings. When “full restraints” are applied, “a
defendant’s hands are closely handcuffed together, these handcuffs
are connected by chain to another chain running around the
defendant’s waist, and the defendant’s feet are shackled and
chained together.” 859 F. 3d 649, 653 (CA9 2017) (en banc). In
support of his proposal, the Marshal cited safety concerns arising
from understaffing, past incidents of violence, and the high volume
of in-custody defendants produced in the Southern District. The
judges agreed to the Marshal’s request, with modifications
providing that a district or magistrate judge may require a
defendant to be produced without restraints, and that a defendant
can request that this be done. See App. 78–79.
Respondents Jasmin Morales, Rene Sanchez-Gomez,
Moises Patricio-Guzman, and Mark Ring were among the defendants
produced by the Marshals Service for pretrial proceedings in full
restraints. They raised constitutional objections to the use of
such restraints in their respective cases, and to the restraint
policy as a whole. They noted that the policy had resulted in the
imposition of full restraints on, for example, a woman with a
fractured wrist, a man with a severe leg injury, a blind man, and a
wheelchair-bound woman. The District Court denied their
challenges.
Respondents appealed to the Court of Appeals for
the Ninth Circuit, but before the court could issue a decision,
their underlying criminal cases came to an end. Morales,
Sanchez-Gomez, and Patricio-Guzman each pled guilty to the offense
for which they were charged: Morales, to felony importation of a
controlled substance, in violation of 21 U. S. C. §§952
and 960; Sanchez-Gomez, to felony misuse of a passport, in
violation of 18 U. S. C. §1544; and Patricio-Guzman, to
misdemeanor illegal entry into the United States, in violation of 8
U. S. C. §1325. The charges against Ring—for making an
interstate threat in violation of 18 U. S. C.
§875(c)—were dismissed pursuant to a deferred-prosecution
agreement.
A panel of the Court of Appeals nonetheless
concluded that respondents’ claims were not moot, and went on to
strike down the restraint policy as violating the Due Process
Clause of the Fifth Amendment. 798 F. 3d 1204 (CA9 2015).
Those rulings were reaffirmed on rehearing en banc. 859 F. 3d
649. The en banc court understood the “main dispute” before it to
be a challenge to the policy itself, not just to the application of
that policy to respondents.
Id., at 655. The court then
construed respondents’ notices of appeal as petitions for mandamus,
which invoked the court’s supervisory authority over the Southern
District.
Id., at 657. The case was, in the court’s view, a
“functional class action” involving “class-like claims” seeking
“class-like relief.”
Id., at 655, 657–658. In light of that
understanding, the Court of Appeals held that this Court’s civil
class action precedents kept the case alive, even though
respondents were no longer subject to the restraint policy.
Id., at 657–659 (citing
Gerstein v.
Pugh, 420
U. S. 103, 110–111, n. 11 (1975)). On the merits, the Court of
Appeals concluded that the restraint policy violated the
Constitution. 859 F. 3d, at 666.
Judge Ikuta, writing in dissent for herself and
four colleagues, rejected the majority’s application of class
action precedents to the individual criminal cases before the court
and would have held the case moot.
Id., at 675. She also
disagreed with the majority on the merits, concluding that the
restraint policy did not violate the Constitution.
Id., at
683.
We granted certiorari. 583 U. S. ___
(2017).
II
To invoke federal jurisdiction, a plaintiff
must show a “personal stake” in the outcome of the action.
Genesis HealthCare Corp. v.
Symczyk, 569 U. S.
66, 71 (2013). “This requirement ensures that the Federal Judiciary
confines itself to its constitutionally limited role of
adjudicating actual and concrete disputes, the resolutions of which
have direct consequences on the parties involved.”
Ibid.
Such a dispute “must be extant at all stages of review, not merely
at the time the complaint is filed.”
Preiser v.
Newkirk, 422 U. S. 395, 401 (1975). A case that becomes
moot at any point during the proceedings is “no longer a ‘Case’ or
‘Controversy’ for purposes of Article III,” and is outside the
jurisdiction of the federal courts.
Already, LLC v.
Nike,
Inc., 568 U. S. 85, 91 (2013).
A
In concluding that this case was not moot, the
Court of Appeals relied upon our class action precedents, most
prominently
Gerstein v.
Pugh. That reliance was
misplaced.[
1]*
Gerstein, a class action brought under
Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23, involved a certified class of
detainees raising claims concerning their pretrial detention. 420
U. S., at 106–107. By the time this Court heard the case, the
named representatives’ claims were moot, and the record suggested
that their interest might have lapsed even before the District
Court certified the class. See
id., at 110–111, n. 11.
Normally a class action would be moot if no named class
representative with an unexpired claim remained at the time of
class certification. See
ibid. (citing
Sosna v.
Iowa, 419 U. S. 393, 402, n. 11 (1975)). The Court
nevertheless held that the case remained live. As we explained,
pretrial custody was inherently temporary and of uncertain length,
such that we could not determine “that any given individual, named
as plaintiff, would be in pretrial custody long enough for a
district judge to certify the class.”
Gerstein, 420
U. S., at 110–111, n. 11. At the same time, it was
certain that there would always be some group of detainees subject
to the challenged practice.
Ibid. Given these circumstances,
the Court determined that the class action could proceed.
Ibid.; see
Swisher v.
Brady, 438 U. S.
204, 213–214, n. 11 (1978) (employing same analysis in a class
action challenging juvenile court procedures).
The Court of Appeals interpreted
Gerstein
to cover all “cases sufficiently similar to class actions” in
which, “because of the inherently transitory nature of the claims,”
the claimant’s “interests would expire before litigation could be
completed.” 859 F. 3d, at 658.
Gerstein was an action
brought under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23, but the Court of
Appeals decided that such “a procedural mechanism to aggregate the
claims” was not a “necessary prerequisite” for application of the
Gerstein rule. 859 F. 3d, at 659 (alteration omitted).
Respondents, the court noted, sought “relief [from the restraint
policy] not merely for themselves, but for all in-custody
defendants in the district.”
Id., at 655. Those “class-like
claims” seeking “class-like relief” were sufficient to trigger the
application of
Gerstein and save the case from mootness,
despite the termination of respondents’ criminal cases. 859
F. 3d, at 655.
We reject the notion that
Gerstein
supports a freestanding exception to mootness outside the class
action context. The class action is a creature of the Federal Rules
of Civil Procedure. See generally 7A C. Wright, A. Miller & M.
Kane, Federal Practice and Procedure §1751
et seq. (3d
ed. 2005). It is an “exception to the usual rule that litigation is
conducted by and on behalf of the individual named parties only,”
and “provides a procedure by which the court may exercise
. . . jurisdiction over the various individual claims in
a single proceeding.”
Califano v.
Yamasaki, 442
U. S. 682, 700–701 (1979). “The certification of a suit as a
class action has important consequences for the unnamed members of
the class.”
Sosna, 419 U. S., at 399, n. 8. Those class
members may be “bound by the judgment” and are considered parties
to the litigation in many important respects.
Devlin v.
Scardelletti, 536 U. S. 1, 7, 9–10 (2002). A certified
class thus “acquires a legal status separate from the interest
asserted by the named plaintiff.”
Genesis HealthCare, 569
U. S., at 74 (quoting
Sosna, 419 U. S., at 399;
alterations omitted).
Gerstein belongs to a line of cases that
we have described as turning on the particular traits of civil
class actions. The first case in this line,
Sosna v.
Iowa, held that when the claim of the named plaintiff
becomes moot after class certification, a “live controversy may
continue to exist” based on the ongoing interests of the remaining
unnamed class members.
Genesis HealthCare, 569 U. S.,
at 74 (citing
Sosna, 419 U. S., at 399–402); see
Franks v.
Bowman Transp. Co., 424 U. S. 747,
755–756 (1976). The “fact that a putative class acquires an
independent legal status once it is certified” was, we later
explained, “essential to our decision[ ] in
Sosna.”
Genesis HealthCare, 569 U. S., at 75; see
Kremens v.
Bartley, 431 U. S. 119, 131–133
(1977) (explaining that, under
Sosna’s rule, “only a
‘properly certified’ class . . . may succeed to the
adversary position of a named representative whose claim becomes
moot”);
Alvarez v.
Smith, 558 U. S. 87, 92–93
(2009) (same).
Gerstein, announced one month after
Sosna, provides a limited exception to
Sosna’s
requirement that a named plaintiff with a live claim exist at the
time of class certification. The exception applies when the pace of
litigation and the inherently transitory nature of the claims at
issue conspire to make that requirement difficult to fulfill. See
Sosna, 419 U. S., at 402, n. 11 (anticipating the
Gerstein rule as an exception);
Gerstein, 420
U. S., at 110–111, n. 11 (describing its holding as “a
suitable exception” to
Sosna). We have repeatedly tied
Gerstein’s rule to the class action setting from which it
emerged. See,
e.g., Genesis HealthCare, 569
U. S., at 71, n. 2 (describing
Gerstein’s rule as
“developed in the context of class actions under Rule 23 to address
the circumstance in which a named plaintiff’s claim becomes moot
prior to certification of the class”);
United States Parole
Comm’n v.
Geraghty, 445 U. S. 388, 397–399 (1980)
(highlighting
Gerstein as an example of the Court
“consider[ing] the application of the ‘personal stake’ requirement
in the class-action context”).
In concluding that
Gerstein reaches
further, the Court of Appeals looked to our recent decision in
Genesis HealthCare Corp. v.
Symczyk. But in that case
the Court refused to extend
Gerstein beyond the class action
context, even with respect to a procedural device bearing many
features similar to a class action.
Genesis HealthCare
addressed whether a “collective action” brought under the Fair
Labor Standards Act (FLSA) by a plaintiff on behalf of herself “and
other ‘similarly situated’ employees” remained “justiciable when
the lone plaintiff’s individual claim bec[ame] moot.” 569
U. S., at 69. In an effort to continue her case on behalf of
others, the plaintiff turned to
Sosna and its progeny,
including
Gerstein. But those cases, we explained, were
“inapposite,” not least because “Rule 23 actions are fundamentally
different from collective actions under the FLSA.”
Genesis
HealthCare, 569 U. S., at 74. Such collective actions, we
stressed, do not “produce a class with an independent legal status,
or join additional parties to the action.”
Id., at 75.
This case, which does not involve
any
formal mechanism for aggregating claims, is even further removed
from Rule 23 and
Gerstein. The Federal Rules of Criminal
Procedure establish for criminal cases no vehicle comparable to the
FLSA collective action, much less the class action. And we have
never permitted criminal defendants to band to- gether to seek
prospective relief in their individual criminal cases on behalf of
a class. As we said when declining to apply nonparty preclusion
outside the formal class action context, courts may not “recognize
. . . a common-law kind of class action” or “create
de facto class actions at will.”
Taylor v.
Sturgell, 553 U. S. 880, 901 (2008) (alterations
omitted); see
Smith v.
Bayer Corp., 564 U. S.
299, 315–316 (2011) (same);
Pasadena City Bd. of Ed. v.
Spangler, 427 U. S. 424, 430 (1976) (rejecting in
mootness context the idea that “the failure to obtain the class
certification required under Rule 23 is merely the absence of a
meaningless ‘verbal recital’ ”).
The court below designated respondents’ case a
“functional class action” because respondents were pursuing relief
“not merely for themselves, but for all in-custody defendants in
the district.” 859 F. 3d, at 655, 657–658. But as explained in
Genesis HealthCare, the “mere presence of . . .
allegations” that might, if resolved in respondents’ favor, benefit
other similarly situated individuals cannot “save [respondents’]
suit from mootness once the[ir] individual claim[s]” have
dissipated. 569 U. S., at 73.
Our conclusion is unaffected by the decision of
the court below to recast respondents’ appeals as petitions for
“supervisory mandamus.” See 859 F. 3d, at 659 (viewing such a
petition, like the civil class action, as a procedural vehicle to
which the
Gerstein rule applies). Supervisory mandamus
refers to the authority of the Courts of Appeals to exercise
“supervisory control of the District Courts” through their
“discretionary power to issue writs of mandamus.”
La Buy v.
Howes Leather Co., 352 U. S. 249, 259–260 (1957). There
is no sign in our scant supervisory mandamus precedents that such
cases are exempt from the normal mootness rules. See generally
Will v.
United States, 389 U. S. 90 (1967);
Schlagenhauf v.
Holder, 379 U. S. 104 (1964);
La Buy, 352 U. S. 249. Indeed, as the court below
acknowledged, “[s]upervisory mandamus cases require live
controversies.” 859 F. 3d, at 657.
B
Respondents do not defend the reasoning of the
Court of Appeals. See Brief for Respondents 58 (arguing that this
Court need not reach the functional class action issue and should
“discard[ ]” that label); Tr. of Oral Arg. 43 (respondents’ counsel
agreeing that they “have not made any effort to defend” the
functional class action approach). In respondents’ view, functional
class actions and
Gerstein’s rule are beside the point
because two respondents—Sanchez-Gomez and Patricio-Guzman—retain a
personal stake in the outcome of their appeals.
Sanchez-Gomez and Patricio-Guzman are no longer
in pretrial custody. Their criminal cases, arising from their
illegal entry into the United States, ended in guilty pleas well
before the Court of Appeals issued its decision. Respondents
contend, however, that the claims brought by Sanchez-Gomez and
Patricio-Guzman fall within the “exception to the mootness doctrine
for a controversy that is capable of repetition, yet evading
review.”
Kingdomware Technologies, Inc. v.
United
States, 579 U. S. ___, ___ (2016) (slip op., at 7)
(internal quotation marks omitted). A dispute qualifies for that
exception only “if (1) the challenged action is in its duration too
short to be fully liti- gated prior to its cessation or expiration,
and (2) there is a reasonable expectation that the same complaining
party will be subjected to the same action again.”
Turner v.
Rogers, 564 U. S. 431, 439–440 (2011) (alterations and
internal quotation marks omitted). The parties do not contest that
the claims at issue satisfy the first prong of that test, but they
sharply disagree as to the second.
Respondents argue that Sanchez-Gomez and
Patricio-Guzman meet the second prong because they will again
violate the law, be apprehended, and be returned to pretrial
custody. But we have consistently refused to “conclude that the
case-or-controversy requirement is satisfied by” the possibility
that a party “will be prosecuted for violating valid criminal
laws.”
O’Shea v.
Littleton, 414 U. S. 488, 497
(1974). We have instead “assume[d] that [litigants] will conduct
their activities within the law and so avoid prosecution and
conviction as well as exposure to the challenged course of
conduct.”
Ibid.; see,
e.g., Spencer v.
Kemna, 523 U. S. 1, 15 (1998) (reasoning that a claim
regarding a parole revocation order was moot following release from
custody because any continuing consequences of the order were
“contingent upon [the claimant] violating the law, getting caught,
and being convicted”);
Honig v.
Doe, 484 U. S.
305, 320 (1988) (“[W]e generally have been unwilling to assume that
the party seeking relief will repeat the type of misconduct that
would once again place him or her at risk of that injury.”);
Lane v.
Williams, 455 U. S. 624, 632–633,
n. 13 (1982) (concluding that case was moot where the
challenged parole revocation could not “affect a subsequent parole
determination unless respondents again violate state law, are
returned to prison, and become eligible for parole”).
Respondents argue that this usual refusal to
assume future criminal conduct is unwarranted here given the
particular circumstances of Sanchez-Gomez’s and Patricio-Guzman’s
offenses. They cite two civil cases—
Honig v.
Doe and
Turner v.
Rogers—in which this Court concluded that
the expectation that a litigant would repeat the misconduct that
gave rise to his claims rendered those claims capable of
repetition. Neither case, however, supports a departure from the
settled rule.
Honig involved a disabled student’s
challenge to his suspension from school for disruptive behavior. We
found that given his “inability to conform his conduct to socially
acceptable norms” or “govern his aggressive, impulsive behavior,”
it was “reasonable to expect that [the student would] again engage
in the type of misconduct that precipitated this suit” and “be
subjected to the same unilateral school action for which he
initially sought relief.” 484 U. S., at 320–321. In
Turner, we determined that an indigent person repeatedly
held in civil contempt for failing to make child support payments,
who was at the time over $13,000 in arrears, and whose next hearing
was only five months away, was destined to find himself in civil
contempt proceedings again. The challenged denial of appointed
counsel at his contempt hearing was thus capable of repetition. See
564 U. S., at 440.
Respondents contend that Sanchez-Gomez and
Patricio-Guzman, like the challengers in
Honig and
Turner, are likely to find themselves right back where they
started if we dismiss their case as moot. Respondents cite a
Sentencing Commission report finding that in 2013 thirty-eight
percent of those convicted and sentenced for an illegal entry or
illegal reentry offense “were deported and subsequently illegally
reentered at least one time.” United States Sentencing Commission,
Illegal Reentry Offenses 15 (2015) (cited by Brief for Respondents
51). Respondents emphasize the economic and familial pressures that
often compel individuals such as Sanchez-Gomez and Patricio-Guzman
to repeatedly attempt to enter the United States. And respondents
note that both men, after their release, actually
did cross
the border into the United States, were apprehended again, and were
charged with new illegal entry offenses. All this, respondents say,
adds up to a sufficient showing that Sanchez-Gomez and
Patricio-Guzman satisfy the “capable of repetition” require- ment.
Because the Court of Appeals was not aware that Sanchez-Gomez and
Patricio-Guzman had subsequently reentered the United States
illegally, respondents invite us to remand this case for further
proceedings.
We decline to do so because
Honig and
Turner are inapposite. Our decisions in those civil cases
rested on the litigants’ inability, for reasons beyond their
control, to prevent themselves from transgressing and avoid
recurrence of the challenged conduct. In
Honig, such
incapacity was the very reason the school sought to expel the
student. And in
Turner, the indigent individual’s large
outstanding debt made him effectively incapable of satisfying his
imminent support obligations. Sanchez-Gomez and Patricio-Guzman, in
contrast, are “able—and indeed required by law”—to refrain from
further criminal conduct.
Lane, 455 U. S., at 633,
n. 13. Their personal incentives to return to the United
States, plus the elevated rate of recidivism associated with
illegal entry offenses, do not amount to an inability to obey the
law. We have consistently refused to find the case or controversy
requirement satisfied where, as here, the litigants simply
“anticipate violating lawful criminal statutes.”
O’Shea, 414
U. S., at 496.
III
None of this is to say that those who wish to
challenge the use of full physical restraints in the Southern
District lack any avenue for relief. In the course of this
litigation the parties have touched upon several possible options.
See,
e.g., Tr. of Oral Arg. 12 (indicating circumstances
under which detainees could bring a civil suit). Because we hold
this case moot, we take no position on the question.
* * *
We vacate the judgment of the Court of Appeals
for the Ninth Circuit and remand the case to that court with
instructions to dismiss as moot.
It is so ordered.
