Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/529bv.pdf
Page Number: 380.0

529US1

Unit: $U42

[10-11-01 11:58:08] PAGES PGT: OPIN

Cite as: 529 U. S. 277 (2000)

305

Scalia, J., concurring in judgment

Court of Appeals.
Id., at 72 (quoting U. S. Bancorp Mort-
gage Co. v. Bonner Mall Partnership, 513 U. S. 18, 23 (1994)).
The rub here is that this case comes to us on writ of certio-
rari to a state court, so that our lack of jurisdiction over the
case also entails, according to our recent jurisprudence, a
lack of jurisdiction to direct a vacatur. See ASARCO Inc.
v. Kadish, 490 U. S. 605, 621, n. 1 (1989). The consequences
of that limitation on our power are in this case signiﬁcant:
A dismissal for mootness caused by respondent’s unilateral
action would leave petitioners subject to an ongoing legal
disability, and a large one at that. Because the Pennsylva-
nia Supreme Court severed the public nudity provision from
the ordinance, thus rendering it inoperative, the city would
be prevented from enforcing its public nudity prohibition not
only against respondent, should it decide to resume opera-
tions in the future, and not only against other nude dancing
establishments, but against anyone who appears nude in pub-
lic, regardless of the “expressiveness” of his conduct or his
purpose in engaging in it.

That is an unfortunate consequence (which could be
avoided, of course, if the Pennsylvania Supreme Court chose
to vacate its judgments in cases that become moot during
appeal). But it is not a consequence that authorizes us to
entertain a suit the Constitution places beyond our power.
And leaving in effect erroneous state determinations regard-
ing the Federal Constitution is, after all, not unusual.
It
would have occurred here, even without the intervening
mootness, if we had denied certiorari. And until the 1914
revision of the Judicial Code, it occurred whenever a state
court erroneously sustained a federal constitutional chal-
lenge, since we did not even have statutory jurisdiction to
entertain an appeal. Compare Judiciary Act of 1789, ch. 20,
§ 25, 1 Stat. 85–87, with Act of Dec. 23, 1914, ch. 2, 38 Stat.
790.
In any event, the short of the matter is that we have
no power to suspend the fundamental precepts that federal
courts “are limited by the case-or-controversy requirement