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law, and could again decide to operate a nude dancing establishment in Erie. Moreover, Pap's failed, despite its obligation to the Court, to mention the potential mootness issue in its brief in opposition, which was filed after Kandyland was closed and the property sold. See Board of License Comm'rs of Tiverton v. Pastore, 469 U. S. 238, 240. In any event, this is not a run of the mill voluntary cessation case. Here it is the plaintiff who, having prevailed below, seeks to have the case declared moot. And it is the defendant city that seeks to invoke the federal judicial power to obtain this Court's review of the decision. Cf. ASARCO Inc. v. Kadish, 490 U. S. 605, 617-618. The city has an ongoing injury because it is barred from enforcing the ordinance's public nudity provisions. If the ordinance is found constitutional, then Erie can enforce it, and the availability of such relief is sufficient to prevent the case from being moot. See Church of Scientology of Cal. v. United States, 506 U. S. 9, 13. And Pap's still has a concrete stake in the case's outcome because, to the extent it has an interest in resuming operations, it has an interest in preserving the judgment below. This Court's interest in preventing litigants from attempting to manipulate its jurisdiction to insulate a favorable decision from review further counsels against a finding of mootness. See, e. g., United States v. W. T. Grant Co., 345 U. S. 629, 632. Pp. 287-289.
Justice O'Connor, joined by The Chief Justice, Justice Kennedy, and Justice Breyer, concluded in Parts III and IV that:
1. Government restrictions on public nudity such as Erie's ordinance should be evaluated under the framework set forth in United States v. O'Brien, 391 U. S. 367, for content-neutral restrictions on symbolic speech. Although being "in a state of nudity" is not an inherently expressive condition, nude dancing of the type at issue here is expressive conduct that falls within the outer ambit of the First Amendment's protection. See, e. g., Barnes, supra, at 565-566 (plurality opinion). What level of scrutiny applies is determined by whether the ordinance is related to the suppression of expression. E. g., Texas v. Johnson, 491 U. S. 397, 403. If the governmental purpose in enacting the ordinance is unrelated to such suppression, the ordinance need only satisfy the "less stringent," intermediate O'Brien standard. E. g., Johnson, supra, at 403. If the governmental interest is related to the expression's content, however, the ordinance falls outside O'Brien and must be justified under the more demanding, strict scrutiny standard. Johnson, supra, at 403. An almost identical public nudity ban was held not to violate the First Amendment in Barnes, although no five Members of the Court agreed on a single rationale for that conclusion. The ordinance here, like the statute in Barnes, is on its face a general prohibition on public nudity. By its terms, it regulates conduct alone. It does not target
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