Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/04pdf/04-278.pdf
Page Number: 11

8 

CASTLE ROCK v. GONZALES 

Opinion of the Court 

Light,  Gas  &  Water  Div.  v.  Craft,  436  U. S.  1,  9  (1978) 
(emphasis added) (quoting Roth, supra, at 577); cf. United 
States  ex rel. TVA v. Powelson, 319 U. S. 266, 279 (1943). 
Resolution  of  the  federal  issue  begins,  however,  with  a 
determination of what it is that state law provides.  In the 
context of the present case, the central state-law question 
is whether Colorado law gave respondent a right to police
enforcement  of  the  restraining  order.    It  is  on  this  point  
that respondent’s call for deference to the Tenth Circuit is 
relevant. 

We have said that a “presumption of deference [is] given 
the views of a federal court as to the law of a State within 
its  jurisdiction.”  Phillips,  supra,  at  167.  That  presump-
tion can be overcome, however, see Leavitt v. Jane L., 518 
U. S. 137, 145 (1996) (per curiam), and we think deference 
inappropriate  here.    The  Tenth  Circuit’s  opinion,  which 
reversed the Colorado District Judge, did not draw upon a 
deep well of state-specific expertise, but consisted primarily 
of  quoting  language  from  the  restraining  order,  the  statu-
tory text, and a state-legislative-hearing transcript.  See 366 
F. 3d,  at  1103–1109.    These  texts,  moreover,  say  nothing 
distinctive  to  Colorado,  but  use  mandatory  language  that 
(as  we  shall  discuss)  appears  in  many  state  and  federal 
statutes.    As  for  case  law:  the  only  state-law  cases  about 
restraining  orders  that  the  Court  of  Appeals  relied  upon 
were decisions of Federal District Courts in Ohio and Penn-
sylvania and state courts in New Jersey, Oregon, and Ten-
nessee.  Id., at 1104–1105, n. 9, 1109.4  Moreover, if we were 

—————— 

4 Most  of  the  Colorado-law  cases  cited  by  the  Court  of  Appeals  ap-
peared  in  footnotes  declaring  them  to  be  irrelevant  because  they 
involved only substantive due process (366 F. 3d, at 1100–1101, nn. 4– 
5),  only  statutes  without  restraining  orders  (id.,  at  1101,  n. 5),  or 
Colorado’s  Government  Immunity  Act,  which  the  Court  of  Appeals 
concluded applies “only to . . . state tort law claims” (id., at 1108–1109, 
n. 12).  Our analysis is likewise unaffected by the Immunity Act or by 
the way that Colorado has dealt with substantive due process or cases