314
Opinion of the Court
Congress' action, "our inquiry is at an end." United States Railroad Retirement Bd. v. Fritz, supra, at 179. This standard of review is a paradigm of judicial restraint. "The Constitution presumes that, absent some reason to infer antipathy, even improvident decisions will eventually be rectified by the democratic process and that judicial intervention is generally unwarranted no matter how unwisely we may think a political branch has acted." Vance v. Bradley, 440 U. S. 93, 97 (1979) (footnote omitted).6
On rational-basis review, a classification in a statute such
as the Cable Act comes to us bearing a strong presumption of validity, see Lyng v. Automobile Workers, 485 U. S. 360,
6 As they did in the Court of Appeals, respondents seek heightened scrutiny, claiming that the statute discriminates on the basis of First Amendment activities. Brief for Respondents Beach Communications, Inc., et al. 12-17 (hereinafter Brief for Respondents). We will confine ourselves, however, to the question presented, which is limited to whether the distinction in § 602(7)(B) is "rationally related to a legitimate government purpose under the Due Process Clause." Pet. for Cert. I. The Court of Appeals did not reach respondents' heightened-scrutiny challenge because it found merit in their rational-basis contentions. 294 U. S. App. D. C., at 388, 959 F. 2d, at 986. In renewing their arguments for heightened scrutiny here, see Brief for Respondents 14-15, respondents point to the burdens imposed on franchised cable systems under the newly enacted Cable Television Consumer Protection and Competition Act of 1992, an Act the Court of Appeals had no opportunity to consider. In these circumstances, respondents' arguments for heightened scrutiny are best left open for consideration by the Court of Appeals on remand.
Respondents also raise a threshold issue. They argue that no case or controversy exists, or that the issue is "moot," on the theory that Congress "adopted" the Court of Appeals' "construction" of § 602(7) (presumably thereby acquiescing in the judgment that local franchising must depend on use of public rights-of-way) when it took no action to amend or defend the provision in later passing the 1992 Act. Brief for Respondents 8-12. Cf. Lorillard v. Pons, 434 U. S. 575, 580-581 (1978). This notion of congressional adoption of statutory interpretations, however, has no place in constitutional review, and the controversy presented in this case is obviously a live one, since petitioners stand ready to defend the statute as drafted.
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