238
Opinion of the Court
mine its continued vitality. The trial court acted within its discretion in entertaining the motion with supporting allegations, but it was also correct to recognize that the motion had to be denied unless and until this Court reinterpreted the binding precedent.
Respondents and Justice Ginsburg urge us to adopt a different analysis because we are reviewing the District Court's denial of petitioners' Rule 60(b)(5) motion for an abuse of discretion. See Browder v. Director, Dept. of Corrections of Ill., 434 U. S. 257, 263, n. 7 (1978). It is true that the trial court has discretion, but the exercise of discretion cannot be permitted to stand if we find it rests upon a legal principle that can no longer be sustained. See Cooter & Gell v. Hartmarx Corp., 496 U. S. 384, 405 (1990). The standard of review we employ in this litigation does not therefore require us to depart from our general practice. See Adarand, supra; Hubbard, supra.
Respondents nevertheless contend that we should not grant Rule 60(b)(5) relief here, in spite of its propriety in other contexts. They contend that petitioners have used Rule 60(b)(5) in an unprecedented way—not as a means of recognizing changes in the law, but as a vehicle for effecting them. If we were to sanction this use of Rule 60(b)(5), respondents argue, we would encourage litigants to burden the federal courts with a deluge of Rule 60(b)(5) motions premised on nothing more than the claim that various judges or Justices have stated that the law has changed. See also post, at 260 (Ginsburg, J., dissenting) (contending that granting Rule 60(b)(5) relief in this litigation will encourage "invitations to reconsider old cases based on 'speculat[ions] on chances from changes in [the Court's membership]"). We think their fears are overstated. As we noted above, a judge's stated belief that a case should be overruled does not make it so. See supra, at 217.
Most importantly, our decision today is intimately tied to the context in which it arose. This litigation involves a
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