270
Thomas, J., concurring in judgment
courts authoritatively interpret the state statute as permitting impositions that are indeed punitive, then and only then can federal courts pronounce a statute that on its face is civil to be criminal. Such an approach protects federal courts from becoming enmeshed in the sort of intrusive inquiry into local conditions at state institutions that are best left to the State's own judiciary, at least in the first instance. And it avoids federal invalidation of state statutes on the basis of executive implementation that the state courts themselves, given the opportunity, would find to be ultra vires. Only this approach, it seems to me, is in accord with our sound and traditional reluctance to be the initial interpreter of state law. See Railroad Comm'n of Tex. v. Pullman Co., 312 U. S. 496, 500-501 (1941).
With this clarification, I join the opinion of the Court.
Justice Thomas, concurring in the judgment.
We granted certiorari to decide whether "an otherwise valid civil statute can be divested of its civil nature" simply because of an administrative agency's failure to implement the statute according to its terms. Pet. for Cert. i (emphasis added). The majority declines to answer this question. Instead, it assumes that the statute at issue is civil—rather than "otherwise . . . civil," or civil "on its face." Young v. Weston, 122 F. 3d 38 (CA9 1997). And then it merely holds that a statute that is civil cannot be deemed the opposite of civil—"punitive," as the majority puts it—as applied to a single individual. Ante, at 267. In explaining this conclusion, the majority expressly reserves judgment on whether the manner of implementation should affect a court's assessment of a statute as civil in the "first instance." Ante, at 263, 267. I write separately to express my view, first, that a statute which is civil on its face cannot be divested of its civil nature simply because of the manner in which it is implemented, and second, that the distinction between a challenge in the
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