Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/09pdf/08-769.pdf
Page Number: 34.0

10 

UNITED STATES v. STEVENS 

ALITO, J., dissenting 

and I take the Court’s point to be that it would be imper-
missible to ban the creation, sale, or possession in Puerto 
Rico of a depiction of a cockfight that was legally staged in
Puerto Rico.5  But assuming for the sake of argument that
this  is  correct,  this  veritable  sliver  of  unconstitutionality 
would not be enough to justify striking down §48 in toto. 

In  sum,  we  have  a  duty  to  interpret  §48  so  as  to  avoid 
serious  constitutional  concerns,  and  §48  may  reasonably 
be construed not to reach almost all, if not all, of the depic-
tions  that  the  Court  finds  constitutionally  protected. 
Thus,  §48  does  not  appear  to  have  a  large  number  of  un-
constitutional  applications.  Invalidation  for  overbreadth 
is  appropriate  only  if  the  challenged  statute  suffers  from 
substantial  overbreadth—judged  not  just  in  absolute
terms,  but  in  relation  to  the  statute’s  “plainly  legitimate 
sweep.”  Williams,  553  U. S.,  at  292.    As  I  explain  in  the 
following  Part,  §48  has  a  substantial  core  of  constitution-
ally permissible applications. 

IV 
A 
1 
As  the  Court  of  Appeals  recognized,  “the  primary  con-
duct that Congress sought to address through its passage
[of  §48]  was  the  creation,  sale,  or  possession  of  ‘crush
videos.’ ”    533  F. 3d  218,  222  (CA3  2008)  (en  banc).    A 
sample crush video, which has been lodged with the Clerk, 
records the following event: 

—————— 

5 Since the Court has taken pains not to decide whether §48 would be
unconstitutional  as  applied  to  graphic  dogfight  videos,  including  those 
depicting fights occurring in countries where dogfighting is legal, I take 
it that the Court does not intend for its passing reference to cockfights 
to mean either that all depictions of cockfights, whether legal or illegal 
under  local  law,  are  protected  by  the  First  Amendment  or  that  it  is 
impermissible to ban the sale or possession in the States of a depiction
of a legal cockfight in Puerto Rico.