Another twist in the increasingly baffling Oregon doctrine of mootness

In City of Eugene v. PERB, the Supreme Court has held that because their appeal went moot,  intervenors are entitled to the "extraordinary remedy" of vacatur of the circuit court judgment because, under the district court judgment, PERB would be required to use the methodology challenged by intervenors in its future rate orders, thereby impeding intervenors' ability to challenge those rate orders - apparently because they would be barred from challenging the prior judgment in subsequent challenges to rate orders.

According to the court, the decision is consistent with its decision in Kerr v. Bradbury, in which it held that the Secretary of State was not entitled to vacatur of an adverse Court of Appeals ruling when the case went moot, because the Secretary of State can simply disregard the decision when and if the issues decided by it arise in the future.

I'm not sure that I see a clear distinction between the two cases; I guess it boils down to whether the Supreme Court considers it likely that the decision at issue in the mooted case will have some kind of binding, prospective effect.  The hard part is figuring out which decisions in mooted cases  will be binding and which decisions can be ignored.

Comments

[Erin Lagesen]

Given that the judgment at issue had significant enough prospective consequences for the intervenors to warrant vacatur, why weren't those consequences significant enough to prevent the appeal from going moot?