Page:MOAC Mall Holdings v. Transform Holdco.pdf/10

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MOAC MALL HOLDINGS LLC v. TRANSFORM HOLDCO LLC

Opinion of the Court

ness holding on the grounds that the District Court on remand would lack the authority to “issue a re-return order either under the Convention or pursuant to its inherent equitable powers.” Id., at 174. We disagreed. We said her argument went “to the meaning of the Convention and the legal availability of a certain kind of relief,” and thus “confuse[d] mootness with the merits.” Ibid. And, at least where the father’s contrary re-return argument was not “so implausible that it [was] insufficient to preserve jurisdiction,” his “prospects of success [were] therefore not pertinent to the mootness inquiry.” Ibid. (citing Steel Co. v. Citizens for Better Environment, 523 U. S. 83, 89 (1998)).

So too here. Like the father in Chafin, MOAC simply seeks “typical appellate relief: that the Court of Appeals reverse the District Court and that the District Court undo what it has done.” 568 U. S., at 173. And we cannot say that the parties have “no ‘concrete interest,’ ” id., at 176, in whether MOAC obtains that relief. Transform’s only retort—which MOAC vigorously disputes—is simply that any ultimate vacatur of the Assignment Order will not matter. Chafin forecloses this kind of argument. Here, as elsewhere, we decline to act as a court of “ ‘first view,’ ” plumbing the Code’s complex depths in “ ‘the first instance’ ” to assure ourselves that Transform is correct about its contention that no relief remains legally available. Zivotofsky v. Clinton, 566 U. S. 189, 201 (2012).^[1]

↑ MOAC, naturally, disputes Transform’s contentions. And MOAC’s arguments about legally available forms of relief are not “so implausible that [they are] insufficient to preserve jurisdiction.” Chafin, 568 U. S., at 174 (citing Steel Co. v. Citizens for Better Environment, 523 U. S. 83, 89 (1998)). We need not take a definitive position on the correct resolution of Transform’s elaborate mootness argument to be confident that MOAC’s disagreement is not frivolous. Id., at 89 (explaining that an argument is implausible, in the relevant sense, when it is “ ‘wholly insubstantial and frivolous … so insubstantial, implausible, foreclosed by prior decisions of this Court, or otherwise completely devoid of merit’ ”).

[1] MOAC, naturally, disputes Transform’s contentions. And MOAC’s arguments about legally available forms of relief are not “so implausible that [they are] insufficient to preserve jurisdiction.” Chafin, 568 U. S., at 174 (citing Steel Co. v. Citizens for Better Environment, 523 U. S. 83, 89 (1998)). We need not take a definitive position on the correct resolution of Transform’s elaborate mootness argument to be confident that MOAC’s disagreement is not frivolous. Id., at 89 (explaining that an argument is implausible, in the relevant sense, when it is “ ‘wholly insubstantial and frivolous … so insubstantial, implausible, foreclosed by prior decisions of this Court, or otherwise completely devoid of merit’ ”).

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