Editing Mootness (section)

===Voluntary cessation===
Where a defendant is acting wrongfully, but as a tactic to avoid an adverse decision, ceases to engage in such conduct once a [[litigation]] has been threatened or commenced, the court will still not deem this correction to moot the case. Obviously, a party could stop acting improperly just long enough for the case to be dismissed and then resume the improper conduct. For example, in ''[[Friends of the Earth, Inc. v. Laidlaw Environmental Services, Inc.]]'', {{ussc|528|167|2000}}, the Supreme Court held that an industrial polluter, against whom various deterrent civil penalties were being pursued, could not claim that the case was moot, even though the polluter had ceased polluting and had closed the factory responsible for the pollution. The court noted that so long as the polluter still retained its license to operate such a factory, it could open similar operations elsewhere if not deterred by the penalties sought.

A separate situation occurs when a court dismisses as "moot" a legal challenge to an existing law, in the case where the law being challenged is either amended or repealed through legislation before the court case could be settled.  Since the remedy available for a bad law is simply the removal or changing of the law, the court's decision cannot create an outcome different than that which has already occurred. As such, any decision would merely be advisory, in violation of the Case or Controversy clause. While this sometimes casually referred to as voluntary cessation, the differences in available remedy make it distinct from technical voluntary cessation.

A recent instance of this occurred in ''[[Moore v. Madigan]],'' where Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan declined to appeal a ruling from the Seventh Circuit striking down Illinois' handgun carry ban to the [[United States Supreme Court]]. As Illinois subsequently passed a law legalizing concealed carry with a state-issued license, the appeal would have been moot since the original case or controversy was no longer relevant.