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Page Number: 30.0

8 

HEMPHILL v. NEW YORK 

THOMAS, J., dissenting 

State  court.”  New  York  ex  rel.  Rosevale  Realty  Co.  v. 
Kleinert, 268 U. S. 646, 650 (1925).

Despite this long tradition, our more recent cases say it
is  “unsettled”  whether  the  proper-presentation  require-
ment is a jurisdictional bar or merely a prudential consid-
eration.  E.g., Bankers Life & Casualty Co. v. Crenshaw, 486 
U. S. 71, 79 (1988).  But the Court has never explained why 
it abandoned a centuries-old limit on our jurisdiction.  Two 
cases in the mid-20th century unsettled the doctrine with
little  justification.    First,  in  Terminiello  v.  Chicago,  337 
U. S.  1  (1949),  the  petitioner  raised  a  First  Amendment 
challenge  to  a  city  ordinance  in  state  court,  but  failed  to 
challenge the jury instruction interpreting that ordinance 
either  below  or  in  this  Court.    The  Court  sidestepped  the
proper-presentation  requirement  by  reading  the  jury  in-
struction as a “construction of the ordinance . . . as binding
on us as though the precise words had been written into the
ordinance.”  Id., at 4.  Later, in Vachon v. New Hampshire, 
414  U. S.  478  (1974)  (per curiam),  the  Court  deviated  yet
further from the jurisdictional understanding of the proper-
presentation rule.  For the first time, and in an unreasoned 
footnote, the Court explicitly forgave a petitioner’s failure 
to present a federal claim to the state court.  See id., at 479, 
n. 3.  Other  than  Terminiello,  the  Court  cited  three  cases 
that  reviewed  claims  from  federal  court,  see  414  U. S.,  at 
483  (Rehnquist,  J.,  dissenting),  where  the  requirement  to
present a federal claim has never been jurisdictional, see, 
e.g., Springfield v. Kibbe, 480 U. S. 257, 259 (1987) (per cu-
riam).

Since  Vachon,  the  Court  has  not  explained  why  the  re-
quirement to present a federal claim in state court is pru-
dential rather than jurisdictional.  Instead, we have repeat-
edly ducked the issue.  See Howell, 543 U. S., at 445–446 
(collecting  cases).    I  see  no  reason  to  prolong  this  Court’s 
ambivalence.  The  proper-presentation  requirement  ap-
pears in the only statute that grants this Court jurisdiction