284
Opinion of the Court
becomes moot on review from a state court, we would have dismissed the petition, leaving intact the judgment below. See ASARCO Inc. v. Kadish, 490 U. S. 605, 621, n. 1 (1989); Erie, 529 U. S., at 305 (Scalia, J., concurring in judgment). Thus, had we declared Erie moot, the defendant municipality would have been saddled with an "ongoing injury," i. e., the judgment striking its law. Id., at 288. And the plaintiff arguably would have prevailed in an "attemp[t] to manipulate the Court's jurisdiction to insulate a favorable decision from review." Ibid.
In this case, we confront no parallel circumstance. The adult enterprise before us left the fray as a loser, not a winner. Our dismissal here does not keep Waukesha under the weight of an adverse judgment, or deprive Waukesha of its victory in state court. Nor does a mootness dismissal reward an arguable manipulation of our jurisdiction, for plaintiff City News, unlike the nude dancing entrepreneur in Erie, opposes a declaration of mootness.1
City News also urges that it experiences ongoing injury because it is conclusively barred by Waukesha's ordinance from reopening as an adult business until 2005. It is far
1 City News appears to rely on the general rule that voluntary cessation of a challenged practice rarely moots a federal case. See, e. g., Friends of Earth, Inc. v. Laidlaw Environmental Services (TOC), Inc., 528 U. S. 167, 189 (2000). But that rule traces to the principle that a party should not be able to evade judicial review, or to defeat a judgment, by temporarily altering questionable behavior. See Gwaltney of Smithfield, Ltd. v. Chesapeake Bay Foundation, Inc., 484 U. S. 49, 66-67 (1987) ("Mootness doctrine . . . protects plaintiffs from defendants who seek to evade sanction by predictable 'protestations of repentance and reform.' ") (quoting United States v. Oregon State Medical Soc., 343 U. S. 326, 333 (1952)); see also Friends of Earth, 528 U. S., at 189 (Courts are not "compelled to leave '[t]he defendant . . . free to return to his old ways.' ") (quoting City of Mesquite v. Aladdin's Castle, Inc., 455 U. S. 283, 289, n. 10 (1982), in turn quoting United States v. W. T. Grant Co., 345 U. S. 629, 632 (1953)). That principle does not aid City News. For it is City News, not its adversary, whose conduct saps the controversy of vitality, and City News can gain nothing from our dismissal.
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