Whether the Ninth Circuit's mootness ruling warrants summary reversal

QUESTION PRESENTED Petitioners are Native Americans who, for decades, engaged in traditional religious practices at a sacred site on less than one acre of federal land in Oregon. In 2008, the federal government authorized the destruction of the site to add a turn lane to a nearby highway. The government admits it could have added the turn lane without harming the site. But it destroyed the site anyway, rendering Petitioners’ continued religious exercise impossible. Petitioners challenged the destruction of their sacred site under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, seeking full or partial remediation of the site. The district court rejected their claim on the merits, concluding that destruction of the site imposed no “substantial burden” on their religious exercise. On appeal—after thirteen years of litigation and hundreds of pages of lower-court opinions—a Ninth Circuit panel dismissed the case as moot in a four-page, unpublished order. The panel said the federal government had granted the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) an “easement” to add the turn lane, and ODOT had been dismissed from the case; therefore, the court lacked authority to order any remediation of the site. The question presented is: Whether the Ninth Circuit’s mootness ruling warrants summary reversal where the panel clearly misapprehended governing law on mootness and on the authority of federal courts to order equitable relief affecting nonparties.