400
Opinion of Breyer, J.
this case has been threatened with contempt for violating the ostensible floating bubble provision. Nor is there any realistic reason to believe that the provision will deter the exercise of constitutionally protected speech rights.
I recognize that the District Court, interpreting or reinterpreting the key language, might find that it creates some kind of bubble that "floats," perhaps in the way I mention above. See supra, at 397. But even then, the constitutional validity of its interpretation would depend upon the specific interpretation that the court then gave and the potentially justifying facts. Some bubbles that "float" in time or space would seem to raise no constitutional difficulty. For example, a 15-foot buffer zone that is "fixed" in place around a doorway but that is activated only when a clinic patient is present can be said to "float" in time or, to a small degree, in space. See Appendix B, infra, Diagram 1 (Point X). Another example of a possibly constitutional "floating" bubble would be one that protects a patient who alights from a vehicle at the curbside in front of the Buffalo GYN Women-services clinic and must cross the two-foot stretch of sidewalk that is outside the 15-foot fixed buffer. See Appendix B, infra, Diagram 2 (Point Y). Other bubbles, such as a bubble that follows a clinic patient to a grocery store three miles away, apparently are of no interest to anyone in this case. A floating bubble that follows a patient who is walking along the sidewalk just in front of a clinic, but outside the 15-foot fixed zone, could raise a constitutional problem. See Appendix B, infra, Diagram 3 (Point Z). But the constitutional validity of that kind of bubble should depend upon the particular clinic and the particular circumstances to which the District Court would point in justification. The Court of Appeals wisely recognized that these matters should be left in the first instance to the consideration of the District Court.
In sum, ordinary principles of judicial administration would permit the District Court to deal with the petitioners' current objection. These principles counsel against this
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