Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/09pdf/08-769.pdf
Page Number: 15.0

Cite as:  559 U. S. ____ (2010) 

11 

Opinion of the Court 

B 

As  we  explained  two  Terms  ago,  “[t]he  first  step  in
overbreadth analysis is to construe the challenged statute; 
it is impossible to determine whether a statute reaches too
far without first knowing what the statute covers.”  United 
States v. Williams, 553 U. S. 285, 293 (2008).  Because §48
is  a  federal  statute,  there  is  no  need  to  defer  to  a  state 
court’s authority to interpret its own law. 

We read §48 to create a criminal prohibition of alarming 
breadth.  To begin with, the text of the statute’s ban on a
“depiction  of  animal  cruelty”  nowhere  requires  that  the
depicted  conduct  be  cruel.    That  text  applies  to  “any  . . . 
depiction”  in  which  “a  living  animal  is  intentionally 
maimed,  mutilated, 
tortured,  wounded,  or  killed.” 
§48(c)(1). 
“[M]aimed,  mutilated,  [and]  tortured”  convey 
cruelty, but “wounded” or “killed” do not suggest any such 
limitation. 

The  Government  contends  that  the  terms  in  the  defini-
tion  should  be  read  to  require  the  additional  element  of
“accompanying acts of cruelty.”  Reply Brief 6; see also Tr. 
(The  dissent  hinges  on  the  same 
of  Oral  Arg.  17–19. 
—————— 

the validity of the statute as applied to Stevens, our consideration of his 
facial overbreadth claim is premature.  Post, at 1, and n. 1, 2–3 (opinion 
of ALITO, J.).  Whether or not that conclusion follows, here no as-applied 
claim  has  been  preserved.    Neither  court  below  construed  Stevens’s 
briefs as adequately developing a separate attack on a defined subset of
the statute’s applications (say, dogfighting videos).  See 533 F. 3d 218, 
231,  n. 13  (CA3  2008)  (en  banc)  (“Stevens  brings  a  facial  challenge  to 
the statute”);  App. to Pet. for Cert. 65a,  74a.  Neither did the Govern-
ment, see Brief for United States in No. 05–2497 (CA3), p. 28 (opposing
“the  appellant’s  facial  challenge”);  accord,  Brief  for  United  States  4. 
The  sentence  in  Stevens’s  appellate  brief  mentioning  his  unrelated 
sufficiency-of-the-evidence  challenge  hardly  developed  a  First  Amend-
ment  as-applied  claim.    See  post,  at  1,  n.  1.  Stevens’s  constitutional 
argument is a general one.  And unlike the challengers in Washington 
State  Grange,  Stevens  does  not  “rest  on  factual  assumptions  . . .  that
can  be  evaluated  only  in  the  context  of  an  as-applied  challenge.”    552 
U. S., at 444.