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Page Number: 17

14 

NEW YORK STATE RIFLE & PISTOL ASSN., INC. v. 
CITY OF NEW YORK 
ALITO, J., dissenting 

Based on all this, we are left with no clear idea where the 
City draws the line, and the situation is further complicated 
by the overlay of State law.  The new State law appears to
prevent  the  City  from  penalizing  any  “direc[t]”  trip  to  a
range  or  competition  outside  the  City,  but  the  State  law 
does not define that limitation.  The petitioners wanted to
enter  competitions  in upstate  New  York  more  than  a  five 
hour drive from the City.  Could they stop along the way? 
And  if  so,  for  how  long?    The  State  has  not  explained  its
understanding of this limitation, and in any event, prosecu-
torial  decisions  in  New  York  are  generally  made  by  the 
State’s 67 elected district attorneys.  See Haggerty v. Hime-
lein,  221  App. Div.  2d  138,  144–145,  644  N. Y. S.  2d  934, 
940 (1996).  The bottom line is that petitioners, who sought 
“unrestricted access” to out-of-city ranges and competitions,
are still subject to restrictions of undetermined meaning. 

These restrictions may not seem very important, but that
is  beside  the  point  for  purposes  of  mootness.  Nor  does  it 
matter  whether,  in  the  end,  those  restrictions  would  be 
found to violate the Second Amendment.  All that matters 
for  present  purposes  is  that  the  City  still  withholds  from
petitioners something that they have claimed from the be-
ginning is their constitutional right.  It follows that the case 
is not moot.  It is as simple as that.

The situation here resembles that in Knox, 567 U. S. 298. 
The  issue  in  that  case  was  whether  a  public  sector  union 
had provided nonmembers the sort of notice that our case
law  required  before  they  could  be  forced  to  pay  a  fee  to 
subsidize certain union activities.  We granted certiorari to
review the Ninth Circuit’s holding that the notice that the 
union had provided was sufficient, but before we could de-
cide the case, the union sent out a new notice and moved to 
dismiss the case as moot.  The employees objected that the
new notice was inadequate, and we refused to dismiss.  In 
so doing, we did not opine on the adequacy of the new notice
but simply held that the case was not moot because “there