Public-domain · open source
OpenJurist

417 F.2d 614

Docket No. 22861.

Richard Smith, and v. Charles F. Denny, And

Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals · decided 1969-10-20

2 counsel of record

Relies on Moore v. Ogilvie · Doremus v. Board of Ed. of Hawthorne

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Opinion by Per Curiam · Decided 1969-10-20

How this case has been cited

Cited by 8 later decisions — most recently March 2010

4 federal appellate ·

40196919701980199020002010decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

View the full empirical analysis of this case →

Kristin B. Glen (argued), Victor Rabinowitz, Leonard B. Boudin and Michale B. Standard, of Rabinowitz, Boudin & Standard, New York City, Benjamin Dreyfus, of Garry, Dreyfus, McTernan & Brotsky, San Francisco, Cal., for appellants.

Robert A. Rehberg (argued), County Counsel, Redding, Cal., for appellees.

ORDER DISMISSING APPEAL

Before CHAMBERS and CARTER, Circuit Judges, and JAMESON, District Judge.*

PER CURIAM:

¶1

The motion to dismiss is granted. The plaintiffs (appellants) now have no interest whatever in the litigation. The children for whom the suit was brought have graduated from high school, thus depriving them and their parents of any continuing interest in the litigation.

¶2

Appellants resist the motion with an impressive array of authorities. We think this is one case still covered by Doremus v. Board of Education, 342 U.S. 429, 72 S.Ct. 394, 96 L.Ed. 475.

¶3

Subsequent authorities indicate that where there is a strong chance that the same complained of conduct will reoccur and the same plaintiffs be offended by it, the cause is not necessarily moot.

¶4

Moore v. Ogilvie, 394 U.S. 814, 89 S.Ct. 1493, 23 L.Ed.2d 1 is the best authority of appellant, but we distinguish it this way:

¶5

In Moore the appellants, who were candidates for the post of presidential elector, challenged the exclusion of their names from the ballot. The Supreme Court decided that although the election was over, the case was not moot because the appellants would again be subjected to the state election law at issue if they chose to again seek election as presidential electors. The appellants here do not show how they might ever be subjected to the pledge of allegiance ceremony held in Redding, California, secondary schools by directive of the Redding school board or suffer any direct harm therefrom. Thus, while the appellants in Moore faced the possibility of future direct harm, the appellants here fail to demonstrate such a possibility and none is apparent to us.

¶6

The contention that appellants have a standing as taxpayers we regard as too fragile a hook to hang a legal claim on here.

Notes:

*

Honorable William J. Jameson, United States District Judge for the District of Montana, sitting by designation

/417/f2d/614 · .json · Public domain