Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/14pdf/13-7120_p86b.pdf
Page Number: 53

16 

JOHNSON v. UNITED STATES 

ALITO, J., dissenting 

challenge  [wa]s  unavailing”  because  “at  least  some  of  the 
items  sold  . . .  [we]re  covered”  by  the  ordinance.    Id.,  at 
500.  These  statements  were  not  dicta.  They  were  the
holding of the case.  Yet the Court does not even mention 
this binding precedent.

Instead,  the  Court  says  that  the  facts  of  two  earlier 
cases  support  a  broader  application  of  the  vagueness
doctrine.  See ante, at 11.  That, too, is incorrect.  Neither 
case remotely suggested that mere overbreadth is enough 
for facial invalidation under the Fifth Amendment. 

In  Coates  v.  Cincinnati,  402  U. S.  611,  612  (1971),  we 
addressed  an ordinance that restricted free assembly and 
association rights by prohibiting “annoying” conduct.  Our 
analysis  turned  in  large  part  on  those  First  Amendment 
concerns.  In  fact,  we  specifically  explained  that  the  “vice
of  the  ordinance  lies  not  alone  in  its  violation  of  the  due 
process  standard  of  vagueness.”  Id.,  at  615.  In  the  pre­
sent  case,  by  contrast,  no  First  Amendment  rights  are  at
issue.  Thus, Coates cannot support the Court’s rejection of 
our  repeated  statements  that  “vagueness  challenges  to
statutes  which  do  not  involve  First  Amendment  freedoms 
must be examined in light of the facts . . . at hand.”  Ma-
zurie, supra, at 550 (emphasis added).

Likewise,  L.  Cohen  Grocery  Co.,  255  U. S.  81,  proves
precisely  the  opposite  of  what  the  Court  claims.    In  that 
case,  we  struck  down  a  statute  prohibiting  “ ‘unjust  or
unreasonable  rate[s]’ ”  because  it  provided  no  “ascertain­
able standard of guilt” and left open “the widest conceivable
inquiry,  the  scope  of  which  no  one  can  foresee  and  the
result of which no one can foreshadow or adequately guard 
against.”  Id., at 89.  The clear import of this language is 
that the law at issue was impermissibly vague in all appli­
cations.  And  in  the  years  since,  we  have  never  adopted 
the  majority’s  contradictory  interpretation.    On  the  con­
trary, we have characterized the case as involving a stat­
ute that could “not constitutionally be applied to any set of