Department of State v. Muñoz

JUSTICE GORSUCH, concurring in the judgment.¶verify

A consular officer denied Sandra Muñoz’s husband a visa to come to and live lawfully in the United States. 526 F. Supp. 3d 709, 713–714 (CD Cal. 2021). In doing so, the officer simply cited 8 U. S. C. §1182(a)(3)(A)(ii), a provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act that makes inadmissible any person a consular officer “has reasonable ground to believe . . . seeks to enter the United States to engage . . . in . . . any other unlawful activity.” Eventually, Ms. Muñoz sued for further explanation of that decision. See App. 2, 8–9. The government, she claimed, needed to identify for her not just the statute on which it based its decision, but also the ''discrete factual predicates'' on which it relied. Id ., at 8, ¶36.¶verify

Over the course of this litigation, the United States has given Ms. Muñoz what she requested. As the Ninth Circuit recognized, the United States has now revealed the factual basis for its decision to deny her husband a visa. 50 F. 4th 906, 919–920 (2022); see App. to Pet. for Cert. 124a; App. 76. In this Court, too, the government has assured Ms. Muñoz that she has a chance to use and respond to that information. She can again seek her husband’s admission to this country, the government says—and this time she will be armed with an understanding of why the government denied the last application. Tr. of Oral Arg. 45, 104.¶verify

Those developments should end this case. With no more information to uncover and no bar to trying for admission again, nothing is left for a court to address through this litigation. In particular, the constitutional questions presented by the government no longer have any practical relevance here. Whether or not Ms. Muñoz had a constitutional right to the information she wanted, the government gave it to her. I therefore would reverse the Ninth Circuit’s decision without reaching the government’s constitutional arguments. See City of Mesquite v. Aladdin’s Castle, Inc. , 455 U. S. 283, 294–295 (1982). At the same time, I do not cast aspersions on the motives of my colleagues who do reach the government’s arguments. They may see the case differently than I do, but their decision and rationales are essentially those the Solicitor General and the Department of State urged this Court to adopt.¶verify