Cite as: 539 U. S. 244 (2003)
Stevens, J., dissenting
Even though there is not a scintilla of evidence that the freshman admissions program now being administered by respondents will ever have any impact on either Hamacher or Gratz, petitioners nonetheless argue that Hamacher has a personal stake in this suit because at the time the complaint was filed, Hamacher intended to apply to transfer to Michigan once certain admission policy changes occurred.5 See App. 34; see also Tr. of Oral Arg. 4-5. Petitioners' attempt to base Hamacher's standing in this suit on a hypothetical transfer application fails for several reasons. First, there is no evidence that Hamacher ever actually applied for admission as a transfer student at Michigan. His claim of future injury is at best "conjectural or hypothetical" rather than "real and immediate." O'Shea v. Littleton, 414 U. S., at 494
reason why petitioners cannot establish standing to seek prospective relief. Rather, the reason they lack standing to seek forward-looking relief is that when this suit was filed, neither faced a " 'real and immediate threat' " of future injury under Michigan's freshman admissions policy given that they had both already enrolled at other institutions. Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Peña, 515 U. S. 200, 210-211 (1995) (quoting Los Angeles v. Lyons, 461 U. S. 95, 105 (1983)). Their decision to obtain a college education elsewhere distinguishes this case from Allan Bakke's single-minded pursuit of a medical education from the University of California at Davis. See Regents of Univ. of Cal. v. Bakke, 438 U. S. 265 (1978); cf. DeFunis v. Odegaard, 416 U. S. 312 (1974) (per curiam).
5 Hamacher clearly can no longer claim an intent to transfer into Michigan's undergraduate program given that he graduated from college in 2001. However, this fact alone is not necessarily fatal to the instant class action because we have recognized that, if a named class representative has standing at the time a suit is initiated, class actions may proceed in some instances following mootness of the named class representative's claim. See, e. g., Sosna v. Iowa, 419 U. S. 393, 402 (1975) (holding that the requisite Article III "case or controversy" may exist "between a named defendant and a member of the class represented by the named plaintiff, even though the claim of the named plaintiff has become moot"); Franks v. Bowman Transp. Co., 424 U. S. 747 (1976). The problem in this case is that neither Gratz nor Hamacher had standing to assert a forward-looking, injunctive claim in federal court at the time this suit was initiated.
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