Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/529bv.pdf
Page Number: 389.0

529US1

Unit: $U42

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314

ERIE v. PAP’S A. M.

Opinion of Souter, J.

for a similar regulation. What is clear is that the evidence
of reliance must be a matter of demonstrated fact, not specu-
lative supposition.

By these standards, the record before us today is deﬁcient
in its failure to reveal any evidence on which Erie may have
relied, either for the seriousness of the threatened harm or
for the efﬁcacy of its chosen remedy. The plurality does the
best it can with the materials to hand, see ante, at 297–298,
but the pickings are slim. The plurality quotes the ordi-
nance’s preamble asserting that over the course of more than
a century the city council had expressed “ﬁndings” of detri-
mental secondary effects ﬂowing from lewd and immoral
proﬁtmaking activity in public places. But however accu-
rate the recital may be and however honestly the councilors
may have held those conclusions to be true over the years,
the recitation does not get beyond conclusions on a subject
usually fraught with some emotionalism. The plurality rec-
ognizes this, of course, but seeks to ratchet up the value of
mere conclusions by analogizing them to the legislative facts
within an administrative agency’s special knowledge, on
which action is adequately premised in the absence of eviden-
tiary challenge. Ante, at 298. The analogy is not obvious;
agencies are part of the executive branch and we defer to
them in part to allow them the freedom necessary to recon-
cile competing policies. See Chevron U. S. A. Inc. v. Natu-
ral Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U. S. 837, 843–845
(1984). That aside, it is one thing to accord administrative
leeway as to predictive judgments in applying “ ‘elusive con-
cepts’ ” to circumstances where the record is inconclusive and
“evidence . . . is difﬁcult to compile,” FCC v. National Citi-
zens Comm. for Broadcasting, 436 U. S. 775, 796–797 (1978),
and quite another to dispense with evidence of current fact
as a predicate for banning a subcategory of expression.3 As

3 The proposition that the presence of nude dancing establishments in-
creases the incidence of prostitution and violence is amenable to empirical
treatment, and the city councilors who enacted Erie’s ordinance are in a