384
Opinion of the Court
hance petitioners' speech rights, see n. 11, supra, and the "cease and desist" limitation must be assessed in that light.12
Petitioners and some of their amici attack the "cease and desist" provision accompanying the exception for sidewalk counselors as content based, because it allows a clinic patient to terminate a protester's right to speak based on, among other reasons, the patient's disagreement with the message being conveyed. But in Madsen we held that the injunction in that case was not content based, even though it was directed only at abortion protesters, because it was only abortion protesters who had done the acts which were being enjoined. Here, the District Court found that "[m]any of the
12 Although petitioners argue that our disapproval of the 300-foot no-approach zone in Madsen requires disapproval of the "cease and desist" provision, Madsen is easily distinguishable on this point, since the no-approach zone was eight times broader than the "buffer zone" deemed necessary to ensure access to the clinic in Madsen.
Justice Scalia in dissent suggests that our failure to endorse the District Court's reason for including the "cease and desist" provision requires us to reverse the District Court's decision setting the injunction's terms. This suggestion is inconsistent with our precedents. See, e. g., Rutan v. Republican Party of Ill., 497 U. S. 62, 76 (1990) ("[A]lthough we affirm the Seventh Circuit's judgment . . . , we do not adopt the Seventh Circuit's reasoning"); Smith v. Phillips, 455 U. S. 209, 215, n. 6 (1982) ("Respondent may, of course, defend the judgment below on any ground which the law and the record permit, provided the asserted ground would not expand the relief which has been granted"); SEC v. Chenery Corp., 318 U. S. 80, 88 (1943) ("[W]e do not disturb the settled rule that, in reviewing the decision of a lower court, it must be affirmed if the result is correct 'although the lower court relied upon a wrong ground or gave a wrong reason' " (quoting Helvering v. Gowran, 302 U. S. 238, 245 (1937)); Langnes v. Green, 282 U. S. 531, 536-537 (1931) ("[T]he entire record is before this court with power to review the action of the court of appeals and direct such disposition of the case as that court might have done upon the writ of error sued out for the review of the [district] court"); Williams v. Norris, 12 Wheat. 117, 120 (1827) (Marshall, C. J.) ("If the judgment [of the lower court] should be correct, although the reasoning, by which the mind of the Judge was conducted to it, should be deemed unsound, that judgment would certainly be affirmed in [this] Court").
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