144
Per Curiam
on banning almost all abortions would prefer, if it could not have that desire, to ban no abortions at all rather than merely some. This notion is, at the very least, questionable when considered in isolation. But when it is put forward in the face of a statutory text that explicitly states the opposite, it is plainly error.
* * *
We have summarily set aside unsupportable judgments in cases involving only individual claims, see, e. g., Board of Ed. of Rogers v. McCluskey, 458 U. S. 966, 969-971 (1982); National Bank of North America v. Associates of Obstetrics & Female Surgery, Inc., 425 U. S. 460, 460-461 (1976). Much more is that appropriate when what is at issue is the total invalidation of a statewide law, see, e. g., Idaho Dept. of Employment v. Smith, 434 U. S. 100, 100-102 (1977). To be sure, we do not normally grant petitions for certiorari solely to review what purports to be an application of state law; but we have done so, see Steele v. General Mills, Inc., 329 U. S. 433, 438, 440-441 (1947); Wichita Royalty Co. v. City Nat. Bank of Wichita Falls, 306 U. S. 103, 107 (1939),5 and undoubtedly should do so where the alternative is allowing
5 The dissent says that our review in Wichita Royalty Co. "was plainly motivated by a concern to give effect to [the] new mandate" of Erie R. Co. v. Tompkins, 304 U. S. 64 (1938), that federal courts apply state substantive law in diversity cases. Post, at 147. It remains the case, however, that "the only question for our decision" was whether the Court of Appeals was correct in its interpretation of state law. 306 U. S., at 107 (emphasis added). As for Steele v. General Mills, Inc., 329 U. S. 433 (1947), there our review was prompted by concern that the judgment below "undermine[d] the transportation policy of Texas," id., at 438. But unless we were wrong in Steele to regard this as "a question of such importance" as to justify review, ibid., the Tenth Circuit's "undermin[ing] [of] the [abortion] policy of [Utah]" presents an issue equally worth our attention. If the dissent is correct that Steele was our last case of this sort, it indicates only that we have not since been faced with a federal court's equivalently clear misinterpretation of a state law of equivalent significance.
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