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Opinion of O'Connor, J.
ments in Erie, and can make particularized, expert judgments about the resulting harmful secondary effects. Analogizing to the administrative agency context, it is well established that, as long as a party has an opportunity to respond, an administrative agency may take official notice of such "legislative facts" within its special knowledge, and is not confined to the evidence in the record in reaching its expert judgment. See FCC v. National Citizens Comm. for Broadcasting, 436 U. S. 775 (1978); Republic Aviation Corp. v. NLRB, 324 U. S. 793 (1945); 2 K. Davis & R. Pierce, Administrative Law Treatise § 10.6 (3d ed. 1994). Here, Kandyland has had ample opportunity to contest the council's findings about secondary effects—before the council itself, throughout the state proceedings, and before this Court. Yet to this day, Kandyland has never challenged the city council's findings or cast any specific doubt on the validity of those findings. Instead, it has simply asserted that the council's evidentiary proof was lacking. In the absence of any reason to doubt it, the city's expert judgment should be credited. And the study relied on by amicus curiae does not cast any legitimate doubt on the Erie city council's judgment about Erie. See Brief for First Amendment Lawyers Association as Amicus Curiae 16-23.
Finally, it is worth repeating that Erie's ordinance is on its face a content-neutral restriction that regulates conduct, not First Amendment expression. And the government should have sufficient leeway to justify such a law based on secondary effects. On this point, O'Brien is especially instructive. The Court there did not require evidence that the integrity of the Selective Service System would be jeopardized by the knowing destruction or mutilation of draft cards. It simply reviewed the Government's various administrative interests in issuing the cards, and then concluded that "Congress has a legitimate and substantial interest in preventing their wanton and unrestrained destruction and assuring their continuing availability by punishing people
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