Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/529bv.pdf
Page Number: 384

529US1

Unit: $U42

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Cite as: 529 U. S. 277 (2000)

309

Scalia, J., concurring in judgment

“grandfathered”—does not render this ordinance discrimina-
tory on its face. To be sure, in the trial court counsel for
the city said that “[t]o the extent that the expressive activity
that is contained in [such] productions rises to a higher level
of protected expression, they would not be [covered],” App.
53—but he rested this assertion upon the provision in the
preamble that expressed respect for “fundamental Constitu-
tional guarantees of free speech and free expression,” and
the provision of Paragraph 6 of the ordinance that provided
for severability of unconstitutional provisions, id., at 53–54.5
What he was saying there (in order to fend off the over-
breadth challenge of respondent, who was in no doubt that
the ordinance did cover theatrical productions, see id., at 55)
was essentially what he said at oral argument before this
Court: that the ordinance would not be enforceable against
theatrical productions if the Constitution forbade it. Tr. of
Oral Arg. 13. Surely that limitation does not cause the ordi-
nance to be not generally applicable, in the relevant sense of
being targeted against expressive conduct.6

5 This followup explanation rendered what Justice Stevens calls coun-
sel’s “categorical” assertion that such productions would be exempt, see
post, at 328, n. 12, notably uncategorical. Rather than accept counsel’s
explanation—in the trial court and here—that is compatible with the text
of the ordinance, Justice Stevens rushes to assign the ordinance a mean-
ing that its words cannot bear, on the basis of counsel’s initial footfault.
That is not what constitutional adjudication ought to be.

6 To correct Justice Stevens’ characterization of my present point: I
do not argue that Erie “carved out an exception” for Equus and Hair.
Post, at 328, n. 14. Rather, it is my contention that the city attorney
assured the trial court that the ordinance was susceptible of an interpreta-
tion that would carve out such exceptions to the extent the Constitution
required them. Contrary to Justice Stevens’ view, ibid., I do not be-
lieve that a law directed against all public nudity ceases to be a “general
law” (rather than one directed at expression) if it makes exceptions for
nudity protected by decisions of this Court. To put it another way, I do
not think a law contains the vice of being directed against expression if it
bans all public nudity, except that public nudity which the Supreme Court
has held cannot be banned because of its expressive content.