Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/529bv.pdf
Page Number: 391.0

529US1

Unit: $U42

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ERIE v. PAP’S A. M.

Opinion of Souter, J.

The record shows that for 23 years there has been a zoning
ordinance on the books to regulate the location of establish-
ments like Kandyland, but the city has not enforced it. One
councilor remarked that “I think there’s one of the problems.
The ordinances are on the books and not enforced. Now this
takes place. You really didn’t need any other ordinances.”
App. 43. Another commented, “I felt very, very strongly,
and I feel just as strongly right now, that this is a zoning
Id., at 45. Even on the plurality’s view of the evi-
matter.”
dentiary burden, this hurdle to the application of O’Brien
requires an evidentiary response.

The record suggests that Erie simply did not try to create
a record of the sort we have held necessary in other cases,
and the suggestion is conﬁrmed by the course of this liti-
gation. The evidentiary question was never decided (or,
apparently, argued) below, nor was the issue fairly joined
before this Court. While respondent did claim that the evi-
dence before the city council was insufﬁcient to support the
ordinance, see Brief for Respondent 44–49, Erie’s reply
urged us not to consider the question, apparently assuming
that Barnes authorized us to disregard it. See Reply Brief
for Petitioners 6–8. The question has not been addressed,
and in that respect this case has come unmoored from the
general standards of our First Amendment jurisprudence.4
Careful readers, and not just those on the Erie City Coun-
cil, will of course realize that my partial dissent rests on a
demand for an evidentiary basis that I failed to make when
I concurred in Barnes, supra.
I should have demanded the
evidence then, too, and my mistake calls to mind Justice
Jackson’s foolproof explanation of a lapse of his own, when
he quoted Samuel Johnson, “ ‘Ignorance, sir,
ignorance.’ ”
McGrath v. Kristensen, 340 U. S. 162, 178 (1950) (concurring

4 By contrast, federal courts in other cases have frequently demanded
evidentiary showings. See, e. g., Phillips v. Keyport, 107 F. 3d 164, 175
(CA3 1997) (en banc); J&B Entertainment, Inc. v. Jackson, 152 F. 3d 362,
370–371 (CA5 1998).