74
Opinion of the Court
As to the District Court's judgment, Yniguez stresses that the date of the mooting event—her resignation from state employment effective April 25, 1990—was some 21/2 months after the February 6, 1990, decision she seeks to preserve. Governor Mofford was the sole defendant bound by the District Court judgment, and Mofford declined to appeal. Therefore, Yniguez contends, the District Court's judgment should remain untouched.
But AOE and Park had an arguable basis for seeking appellate review, and the Attorney General promptly made known his independent interest in defending Article XXVIII against the total demolition declared by the District Court. First, the Attorney General repeated his plea for certification of Article XXVIII to the Arizona Supreme Court. See Record, Doc. No. 82. And if that plea failed, he asked, in his motion to intervene, "to be joined as a defendant so that he may participate in all post-judgment proceedings." Record, Doc. No. 93, p. 2. Although denied party status, the Attorney General had, at a minimum, a right secured by Congress, a right to present argument on appeal "on the question of constitutionality." See 28 U. S. C. § 2403(b). He was in the process of pursuing that right when the mooting event occurred.
We have already recounted the course of proceedings thereafter. First, Yniguez did not tell the Court of Appeals that she had left the State's employ. See supra, at 68, n. 23. When that fact was disclosed to the court by the Attorney General, a dismissal for mootness was suggested, and rejected. A mootness disposition at that point was in order, we have just explained. Such a dismissal would have stopped in midstream the Attorney General's endeavor, premised on § 2403(b), to defend the State's law against a declaration of unconstitutionality, and so would have warranted a path-clearing vacatur decree.
The State urges that its current plea for vacatur is compelling in view of the extraordinary course of this litigation.
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