Cite as: 508 U. S. 656 (1993)
O'Connor, J., dissenting
possible to say that there was "no reasonable expectation" that the city would reenact the challenged language.
City of Mesquite did not purport to overrule the long line of cases in which we have found repeal of a challenged statute to moot the case. Significantly, we have not referred to the voluntary-cessation doctrine in any other case involving a statute repealed or materially altered pending review. The reason seems to me obvious. Unlike in City of Mesquite, in the ordinary case it is not at all reasonable to suppose that the legislature has repealed or amended a challenged law simply to avoid litigation and that it will reinstate the original legislation if given the opportunity. This is especially true where, as here, the law has been replaced— no doubt at considerable effort and expense—with a more narrowly drawn version designed to cure alleged legal infirmities. We ordinarily do not presume that legislative bodies act in bad faith. That is why, other than in City of Mesquite, we have not required the government to establish that it cannot be expected to reenact repealed legislation before we will dismiss the case as moot.
At most, I believe City of Mesquite stands for the proposition that the Court has discretion to decide a case in which the statute under review has been repealed or amended. The Court appropriately may render judgment where circumstances demonstrate that the legislature likely will reinstate the old law—which would make a declaratory judgment or an order enjoining the law's enforcement worthwhile. But such circumstances undoubtedly are rare. And the majority points to nothing in the record of this case to suggest that we are dealing with the same sort of legislative improprieties that concerned us in City of Mesquite.
The majority is therefore quite unconvincing in its assertion that the mootness question in this case "is controlled by" City of Mesquite. Ante, at 661. By treating that exceptional case as announcing a general rule favoring the exer-
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