412
White, J., concurring in judgment
rick, 413 U. S., at 615, and when the statute is not susceptible to limitation or partial invalidation, id., at 613; Board of Airport Comm'rs of Los Angeles v. Jews for Jesus, Inc., 482 U. S. 569, 574 (1987). "When a federal court is dealing with a federal statute challenged as overbroad, it should . . . construe the statute to avoid constitutional problems, if the statute is subject to a limiting construction." Ferber, 458 U. S., at 769, n. 24. Of course, "[a] state court is also free to deal with a state statute in the same way." Ibid. See, e. g., Osborne, 495 U. S., at 113-114.
Petitioner contends that the St. Paul ordinance is not susceptible to a narrowing construction and that the ordinance therefore should be considered as written, and not as construed by the Minnesota Supreme Court. Petitioner is wrong. Where a state court has interpreted a provision of state law, we cannot ignore that interpretation, even if it is not one that we would have reached if we were construing the statute in the first instance. Ibid.; Kolender v. Lawson, 461 U. S. 352, 355 (1983); Hoffman Estates v. Flipside, Hoffman Estates, Inc., 455 U. S. 489, 494, n. 5 (1982).12
Of course, the mere presence of a state court interpretation does not insulate a statute from overbreadth review. We have stricken legislation when the construction supplied by the state court failed to cure the overbreadth problem.
12 Petitioner can derive no support from our statement in Virginia v. American Booksellers Assn., Inc., 484 U. S. 383, 397 (1988), that "the statute must be 'readily susceptible' to the limitation; we will not rewrite a state law to conform it to constitutional requirements." In American Booksellers, no state court had construed the language in dispute. In that instance, we certified a question to the state court so that it would have an opportunity to provide a narrowing interpretation. Ibid. In Erznoznik v. Jacksonville, 422 U. S. 205, 216 (1975), the other case upon which petitioner principally relies, we observed not only that the ordinance at issue was not "by its plain terms . . . easily susceptible of a narrowing construction," but that the state courts had made no effort to restrict the scope of the statute when it was challenged on overbreadth grounds.
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