(Slip Opinion) OCTOBER TERM, 1999 1 Syllabus NOTE: Where it is feasible, a syllabus (headnote) will be released, as is being done in connection with this case, at the time the opinion is issued. The syllabus constitutes no part of the opinion of the Court but has been prepared by the Reporter of Decisions for the convenience of the reader. See United States v. Detroit Timber & Lumber Co., 200 U. S. 321, 337. SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES Syllabus UNITED STATES v. MORRISON ET AL. CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT No. 99­5. Argued January 11, 2000- Decided May 15, 2000* Petitioner Brzonkala filed suit, alleging, inter alia, that she was raped by respondents while the three were students at the Virginia Poly- technic Institute, and that this attack violated 42 U. S. C. §13981, which provides a federal civil remedy for the victims of gender- motivated violence. Respondents moved to dismiss on the grounds that the complaint failed to state a claim and that §13981's civil rem- edy is unconstitutional. Petitioner United States intervened to de- fend the section's constitutionality. In dismissing the complaint, the District Court held that it stated a claim against respondents, but that Congress lacked authority to enact §13981 under either §8 of the Commerce Clause or §5 of the Fourteenth Amendment, which Con- gress had explicitly identified as the sources of federal authority for §13981. The en banc Fourth Circuit affirmed. Held: Section 13981 cannot be sustained under the Commerce Clause or §5 of the Fourteenth Amendment. Pp. 7­28. (a) The Commerce Clause does not provide Congress with authority to enact §13981's federal civil remedy. A congressional enactment will be invalidated only upon a plain showing that Congress has ex- ceeded its constitutional bounds. See United States v. Lopez, 514 U. S. 549, 568, 577­578. Petitioners assert that §13981 can be sus- tained under Congress' commerce power as a regulation of activity that substantially affects interstate commerce. The proper frame- work for analyzing such a claim is provided by the principles the Court set out in Lopez. First, in Lopez, the noneconomic, criminal na- - - - - - - * Together with No. 99­29, Brzonkala v. Morrison et al., also on cer- tiorari to the same court. 2 UNITED STATES v. MORRISON Syllabus ture of possessing a firearm in a school zone was central to the Court's conclusion that Congress lacks authority to regulate such possession. Similarly, gender-motivated crimes of violence are not, in any sense, economic activity. Second, like the statute at issue in Lo- pez, §13981 contains no jurisdictional element establishing that the federal cause of action is in pursuance of Congress' regulation of in- terstate commerce. Although Lopez makes clear that such a jurisdic- tional element would lend support to the argument that §13981 is sufficiently tied to interstate commerce to come within Congress' authority, Congress elected to cast §13981's remedy over a wider, and more purely intrastate, body of violent crime. Third, although §13981, unlike the Lopez statute, is supported by numerous findings regarding the serious impact of gender-motivated violence on victims and their families, these findings are substantially weakened by the fact that they rely on reasoning that this Court has rejected, namely a but-for causal chain from the initial occurrence of violent crime to every attenuated effect upon interstate commerce. If accepted, this reasoning would allow Congress to regulate any crime whose nation- wide, aggregated impact has substantial effects on employment, pro- duction, transit, or consumption. Moreover, such reasoning will not limit Congress to regulating violence, but may be applied equally as well to family law and other areas of state regulation since the ag- gregate effect of marriage, divorce, and childrearing on the national economy is undoubtedly significant. The Constitution requires a dis- tinction between what is truly national and what is truly local, and there is no better example of the police power, which the Founders undeniably left reposed in the States and denied the central govern- ment, than the suppression of violent crime and vindication of its vic- tims. Congress therefore may not regulate noneconomic, violent criminal conduct based solely on the conduct's aggregate effect on in- terstate commerce. Pp. 7­19. (b) Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment, which permits Con- gress to enforce by appropriate legislation the constitutional guaran- tee that no State shall deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process or deny any person equal protection of the laws, City of Boerne v. Flores, 521 U. S. 507, 517, also does not give Con- gress the authority to enact §13981. Petitioners' assertion that there is pervasive bias in various state justice systems against victims of gender-motivated violence is supported by a voluminous congres- sional record. However, the Fourteenth Amendment places limita- tions on the manner in which Congress may attack discriminatory conduct. Foremost among them is the principle that the Amendment prohibits only state action, not private conduct. This was the conclu- sion reached in United States v. Harris, 106 U. S. 629, and the Civil Cite as: 529 U. S. ____ (2000) 3 Syllabus Rights Cases, 109 U. S. 3, which were both decided shortly after the Amendment's adoption. The force of the doctrine of stare decisis be- hind these decisions stems not only from the length of time they have been on the books, but also from the insight attributable to the Mem- bers of the Court at that time, who all had intimate knowledge and familiarity with the events surrounding the Amendment's adoption. Neither United States v. Guest, 383 U. S. 745, nor District of Colum- bia v. Carter, 409 U. S. 418, casts any doubt on the enduring vitality of the Civil Rights Cases and Harris. Assuming that there has been gender-based disparate treatment by state authorities in this case, it would not be enough to save §13981's civil remedy, which is directed not at a State or state actor but at individuals who have committed criminal acts motivated by gender bias. Section 13981 visits no con- sequence on any Virginia public official involved in investigating or prosecuting Brzonkala's assault, and it is thus unlike any of the §5 remedies this Court has previously upheld. See e.g., South Carolina v. Katzenbach, 383 U. S. 301. Section 13981 is also different from previously upheld remedies in that it applies uniformly throughout the Nation, even though Congress' findings indicate that the problem addressed does not exist in all, or even most, States. In contrast, the §5 remedy in Katzenbach was directed only to those States in which Congress found that there had been discrimination. Pp. 19­27. 169 F. 3d 820, affirmed. REHNQUIST, C. J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which O'CONNOR, SCALIA, KENNEDY, and THOMAS, JJ., joined. THOMAS, J., filed a concurring opinion. SOUTER, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which STEVENS, GINSBURG, and BREYER, JJ., joined. BREYER, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which STEVENS, J., joined, and in which SOUTER and GINSBURG, JJ., joined as to Part I­A. Cite as: 529 U. S. ____ (2000) 1 Opinion of the Court NOTICE: This opinion is subject to formal revision before publication in the preliminary print of the United States Reports. Readers are requested to notify the Reporter of Decisions, Supreme Court of the United States, Wash- ington, D. C. 20543, of any typographical or other formal errors, in order that corrections may be made before the preliminary print goes to press. SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES _________________ Nos. 99­5 and 99­29 _________________ UNITED STATES, PETITIONER 99­5 v. ANTONIO J. MORRISON ET AL. CHRISTY BRZONKALA, PETITIONER 99­29 v. ANTONIO J. MORRISON ET AL. ON WRITS OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT [May 15, 2000] CHIEF JUSTICE REHNQUIST delivered the opinion of the Court. In these cases we consider the constitutionality of 42 U. S. C. §13981, which provides a federal civil remedy for the victims of gender-motivated violence. The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, sitting en banc, struck down §13981 because it concluded that Co n- gress lacked constitutional authority to enact the section's civil remedy. Believing that these cases are controlled by our decisions in United States v. Lopez, 514 U. S. 549 (1995), United States v. Harris, 106 U. S. 629 (1883), and the Civil Rights Cases, 109 U. S. 3 (1883), we affirm. I Petitioner Christy Brzonkala enrolled at Virginia Pol y- technic Institute (Virginia Tech) in the fall of 1994. In 2 UNITED STATES v. MORRISON Opinion of the Court September of that year, Brzonkala met respondents Anto- nio Morrison and James Crawford, who were both st u- dents at Virginia Tech and members of its varsity football team. Brzonkala alleges that, within 30 minutes of meeting Morrison and Crawford, they assaulted and r e- peatedly raped her. After the attack, Morrison allegedly told Brzonkala, "You better not have any . . . diseases." Complaint ¶22. In the months following the rape, Morr i- son also allegedly announced in the dormitory's dining room that he "like[d] to get girls drunk and . . . ." Id., ¶31. The omitted portions, quoted verbatim in the briefs on file with this Court, consist of boasting, debased remarks about what Morrison would do to women, vulgar remarks that cannot fail to shock and offend. Brzonkala alleges that this attack caused her to become severely emotionally disturbed and depressed. She sought assistance from a university psychiatrist, who prescribed antidepressant medication. Shortly after the rape Brzonkala stopped attending classes and withdrew from the university. In early 1995, Brzonkala filed a complaint against r e- spondents under Virginia Tech's Sexual Assault Policy. During the school-conducted hearing on her complaint, Morrison admitted having sexual contact with her despite the fact that she had twice told him "no." After the hea r- ing, Virginia Tech's Judicial Committee found insufficient evidence to punish Crawford, but found Morrison guilty of sexual assault and sentenced him to immediate suspe n- sion for two semesters. Virginia Tech's dean of students upheld the judicial committee's sentence. However, in July 1995, Virginia Tech informed Brzonkala that Morrison intended to init i- ate a court challenge to his conviction under the Sexual Assault Policy. University officials told her that a second hearing would be necessary to remedy the school's error in prosecuting her complaint under that policy, which had Cite as: 529 U. S. ____ (2000) 3 Opinion of the Court not been widely circulated to students. The university therefore conducted a second hearing under its Abusive Conduct Policy, which was in force prior to the dissemin a- tion of the Sexual Assault Policy. Following this second hearing the Judicial Committee again found Morrison guilty and sentenced him to an identical 2-semester su s- pension. This time, however, the description of Morrison's offense was, without explanation, changed from "sexual assault" to "using abusive language." Morrison appealed his second conviction through the university's administrative system. On August 21, 1995, Virginia Tech's senior vice president and provost set aside Morrison's punishment. She concluded that it was " `excessive when compared with other cases where there has been a finding of violation of the Abusive Conduct Policy,' " 132 F. 3d 950, 955 (CA4 1997). Virginia Tech did not inform Brzonkala of this decision. After learning from a newspaper that Morrison would be returning to Virginia Tech for the fall 1995 semester, she dropped out of the university. In December 1995, Brzonkala sued Morrison, Crawford, and Virginia Tech in the United States District Court for the Western District of Virginia. Her complaint alleged that Morrison's and Crawford's attack violated §13981 and that Virginia Tech's handling of her complaint violated Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, 86 Stat. 373­375, 20 U. S. C. §§1681­1688. Morrison and Cra w- ford moved to dismiss this complaint on the grounds that it failed to state a claim and that §13981's civil remedy is unconstitutional. The United States, petitioner in No. 99­ 5, intervened to defend §13981's constitutionality. The District Court dismissed Brzonkala's Title IX claims against Virginia Tech for failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted. See Brzonkala v. Virginia Polytechnic and State Univ., 935 F. Supp. 772 (WD Va. 1996). It then held that Brzonkala's complaint stated a 4 UNITED STATES v. MORRISON Opinion of the Court claim against Morrison and Crawford under §13981, but dismissed the complaint because it concluded that Co n- gress lacked authority to enact the section under either the Commerce Clause or §5 of the Fourteenth Amend- ment. Brzonkala v. Virginia Polytechnic and State Univ., 935 F. Supp. 779 (WD Va. 1996). A divided panel of the Court of Appeals reversed the District Court, reinstating Brzonkala's §13981 claim and her Title IX hostile environment claim.1 Brzonkala v. Virginia Polytechnic and State Univ., 132 F. 3d 949 (CA4 1997). The full Court of Appeals vacated the panel's opinion and reheard the case en banc. The en banc court then issued an opinion affirming the District Court's conclusion that Brzonkala stated a claim under §13981 because her complaint alleged a crime of violence and the allegations of Morrison's crude and derogatory statements regarding his treatment of women sufficiently indicated that his crime was motivated by gender animus.2 Never- theless, the court by a divided vote affirmed the District Court's conclusion that Congress lacked constitutional authority to enact §13981's civil remedy. Brzonkala v. Virginia Polytechnic and State Univ., 169 F. 3d 820 (CA4 1999). Because the Court of Appeals invalidated a federal statute on constitutional grounds, we granted certiorari. 527 U. S. 1068 (1999). - - - - - - 1 The panel affirmed the dismissal of Brzonkala's Title IX disparate treatment claim. See 132 F. 3d, at 961­962. 2 The en banc Court of Appeals affirmed the District Court's concl u- sion that Brzonkala failed to state a claim alleging disparate treatment under Title IX, but vacated the District Court's dismissal of her hostile environment claim and remanded with instructions for the District Court to hold the claim in abeyance pending this Court's decision in Davis v. Monroe County Bd. of Ed., 526 U. S. 629 (1999). Brzonkala v. Virginia Polytechnic and State Univ., 169 F. 3d 820, 827, n. 2 (CA4 1999). Our grant of certiorari did not encompass Brzonkala's Title IX claims, and we thus do not consider them in this opinion. Cite as: 529 U. S. ____ (2000) 5 Opinion of the Court Section 13981 was part of the Violence Against Women Act of 1994, §40302, 108 Stat. 1941­1942. It states that "[a]ll persons within the United States shall have the right to be free from crimes of violence motivated by gender." 42 U. S. C. §13981(b). To enforce that right, subsection (c) declares: "A person (including a person who acts under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage of any State) who commits a crime of violence moti- vated by gender and thus deprives another of the right declared in subsection (b) of this section shall be liable to the party injured, in an action for the reco v- ery of compensatory and punitive damages, injunctive and declaratory relief, and such other relief as a court may deem appropriate." Section 13981 defines a "crim[e] of violence motivated by gender" as "a crime of violence committed because of gender or on the basis of gender, and due, at least in part, to an animus based on the victim's gender." §13981(d)(1). It also provides that the term "crime of violence" includes any "(A) . . . act or series of acts that would constitute a felony against the person or that would constitute a felony against property if the conduct presents a ser i- ous risk of physical injury to another, and that would come within the meaning of State or Federal offenses described in section 16 of Title 18, whether or not those acts have actually resulted in criminal charges, prosecution, or conviction and whether or not those acts were committed in the special maritime, territo- rial, or prison jurisdiction of the United States; and "(B) includes an act or series of acts that would co n- stitute a felony described in subparagraph (A) but for the relationship between the person who takes such action and the individual against whom such action is taken." §13981(d)(2). 6 UNITED STATES v. MORRISON Opinion of the Court Further clarifying the broad scope of §13981's civil remedy, subsection (e)(2) states that "[n]othing in this section requires a prior criminal complaint, prosecution, or conviction to establish the elements of a cause of action under subsection (c) of this section." And subsection (e)(3) provides a §13981 litigant with a choice of forums: Federal and state courts "shall have concurrent jurisdiction" over complaints brought under the section. Although the foregoing language of §13981 covers a wide swath of criminal conduct, Congress placed some limitations on the section's federal civil remedy. Subse c- tion (e)(1) states that "[n]othing in this section entitles a person to a cause of action under subsection (c) of this section for random acts of violence unrelated to gender or for acts that cannot be demonstrated, by a preponderance of the evidence, to be motivated by gender." Subsection (e)(4) further states that §13981 shall not be construed "to confer on the courts of the United States jurisdiction over any State law claim seeking the establishment of a d i- vorce, alimony, equitable distribution of marital property, or child custody decree." Every law enacted by Congress must be based on one or more of its powers enumerated in the Constitution. "The powers of the legislature are defined and limited; and that those limits may not be mistaken or forgotten, the const i- tution is written." Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137, 176 (1803) (Marshall, C. J.). Congress explicitly identified the sources of federal authority on which it relied in enacting §13981. It said that a "federal civil rights cause of action" is established "[p]ursuant to the affirmative power of Congress . . . under section 5 of the Fourteenth Amend- ment to the Constitution, as well as under section 8 of Article I of the Constitution." 42 U. S. C. §13981(a). We address Congress' authority to enact this remedy under each of these constitutional provisions in turn. Cite as: 529 U. S. ____ (2000) 7 Opinion of the Court II Due respect for the decisions of a coordinate branch of Government demands that we invalidate a congressional enactment only upon a plain showing that Congress has exceeded its constitutional bounds. See United States v. Lopez, 514 U. S., at 568, 577­578 (KENNEDY, J., concur- ring); United States v. Harris, 106 U. S., at 635. With this presumption of constitutionality in mind, we turn to the question whether §13981 falls within Congress' power under Article I, §8, of the Constitution. Brzonkala and the United States rely upon the third clause of the Article, which gives Congress power "[t]o regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes." As we discussed at length in Lopez, our interpretation of the Commerce Clause has changed as our Nation has developed. See Lopez, 514 U. S., at 552­557; id., at 568­ 574 (KENNEDY, J., concurring); id., at 584, 593­599 (THOMAS, J., concurring). We need not repeat that d e- tailed review of the Commerce Clause's history here; it suffices to say that, in the years since NLRB v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp., 301 U. S. 1 (1937), Congress has had considerably greater latitude in regulating conduct and transactions under the Commerce Clause than our prev i- ous case law permitted. See Lopez, 514 U. S., at 555­556; id., at 573­574 (KENNEDY, J., concurring). Lopez emphasized, however, that even under our mo d- ern, expansive interpretation of the Commerce Clause, Congress' regulatory authority is not without effective bounds. Id., at 557. "[E]ven [our] modern-era precedents which have e x- panded congressional power under the Commerce Clause confirm that this power is subject to outer limits. In Jones & Laughlin Steel, the Court warned that the scope of the interstate commerce power `must 8 UNITED STATES v. MORRISON Opinion of the Court be considered in the light of our dual system of go v- ernment and may not be extended so as to embrace e f- fects upon interstate commerce so indirect and remote that to embrace them, in view of our complex society, would effectually obliterate the distinction between what is national and what is local and create a co m- pletely centralized government.' " Id., at 556­557 (quoting Jones & Laughlin Steel, supra, at 37).3 As we observed in Lopez, modern Commerce Clause jurisprudence has "identified three broad categories of activity that Congress may regulate under its commerce power." 514 U. S., at 558 (citing Hodel v. Virginia Surface Mining & Reclamation Assn., Inc., 452 U. S. 264, 276­277 (1981); Perez v. United States, 402 U. S. 146, 150 (1971)). "First, Congress may regulate the use of the channels of interstate commerce." 514 U. S., at 558 (citing Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc. v. United States, 379 U. S. 241, 256 (1964); United States v. Darby, 312 U. S. 100, 114 (1941)). "Second, Congress is empowered to regulate and protect the instrumentalities of interstate commerce, or persons or things in interstate commerce, even though the threat may come only from intrastate activities." 514 U. S., at 558 (citing Shreveport Rate Cases, 234 U. S. 342 (1914); Southern R. Co. v. United States, 222 U. S. 20 (1911); Perez, supra, at 150). "Finally, Congress' commerce - - - - - - 3 JUSTICE SOUTER's dissent takes us to task for allegedly abandoning Jones & Laughlin Steel in favor of an inadequate "federalism of some earlier time." Post, at 15­17, 29. As the foregoing language from Jones & Laughlin Steel makes clear however, this Court has always recog- nized a limit on the commerce power inherent in "our dual system of government." 301 U. S., at 37. It is the dissent's remarkable theory that the commerce power is without judicially enforceable boundaries that disregards the Court's caution in Jones & Laughlin Steel against allowing that power to "effectually obliterate the distinction between what is national and what is local." Ibid. Cite as: 529 U. S. ____ (2000) 9 Opinion of the Court authority includes the power to regulate those activities having a substantial relation to interstate commerce, . . . i.e., those activities that substantially affect interstate commerce." 514 U. S., at 558­559 (citing Jones & Laugh- lin Steel, supra, at 37). Petitioners do not contend that these cases fall within either of the first two of these categories of Commerce Clause regulation. They seek to sustain §13981 as a regulation of activity that substantially affects interstate commerce. Given §13981's focus on gender-motivated violence wherever it occurs (rather than violence directed at the instrumentalities of interstate commerce, interstate markets, or things or persons in interstate commerce), we agree that this is the proper inquiry. Since Lopez most recently canvassed and clarified our case law governing this third category of Commerce Clause regulation, it provides the proper framework for conducting the required analysis of §13981. In Lopez, we held that the Gun-Free School Zones Act of 1990, 18 U. S. C. §922(q)(1)(A), which made it a federal crime to knowingly possess a firearm in a school zone, exceeded Congress' authority under the Commerce Clause. See 514 U. S., at 551. Several significant considerations contrib- uted to our decision. First, we observed that §922(q) was "a criminal statute that by its terms has nothing to do with `commerce' or any sort of economic enterprise, however broadly one might define those terms." Id., at 561. Reviewing our case law, we noted that "we have upheld a wide variety of congre s- sional Acts regulating intrastate economic activity where we have concluded that the activity substantially affected interstate commerce." Id., at 559. Although we cited only a few examples, including Wickard v. Filburn, 317 U. S. 111 (1942); Hodel, supra; Perez, supra; Katzenbach v. McClung, 379 U. S. 294 (1964); and Heart of Atlanta Mo- tel, supra, we stated that the pattern of analysis is clear. 10 UNITED STATES v. MORRISON Opinion of the Court Lopez, 514 U. S., at 559­560. "Where economic activity substantially affects interstate commerce, legislation regulating that activity will be sustained." Id., at 560. Both petitioners and JUSTICE SOUTER's dissent downplay the role that the economic nature of the regulated activity plays in our Commerce Clause analysis. But a fair reading of Lopez shows that the noneconomic, criminal nature of the conduct at issue was central to our decision in that case. See, e.g., id., at 551 ("The Act [does not] regulat[e] a com- mercial activity"), 560 ("Even Wickard, which is perhaps the most far reaching example of Commerce Clause authority over intrastate activity, involved economic activ- ity in a way that the possession of a gun in a school zone does not"), 561 ("Section 922(q) is not an essential part of a larger regulation of economic activity"), 566 ("Admittedly, a determination whether an intrastate activity is commercial or noncommercial may in some cases result in legal unce r- tainty. But, so long as Congress' authority is limited to those powers enumerated in the Constitution, and so long as those enumerated powers are interpreted as having judicially enforceable outer limits, congressional legislation under the Commerce Clause always will engender `legal uncertainty' "), 567 ("The possession of a gun in a local school zone is in no sense an economic activity that might, through repetition elsewhere, substantially affect any sort of interstate commerce"); see also id., at 573­574 (KENNEDY, J., concurring) (stating that Lopez did not alter our "practical conception of commercial regulation" and that Congress may "regulate in the commercial sphere on the assumption that we have a single market and a uni- fied purpose to build a stable national economy"), 577 ("Were the Federal Government to take over the regulat- ion of entire areas of traditional state concern, areas having nothing to do with the regulation of commercial activities, the boundaries between the spheres of federal and state authority would blur"), 580 ("[U]nlike the earlier Cite as: 529 U. S. ____ (2000) 11 Opinion of the Court cases to come before the Court here neither the actors nor their conduct has a commercial character, and neither the purposes nor the design of the statute has an evident co m- mercial nexus. The statute makes the simple posses- sion of a gun within 1,000 feet of the grounds of the school a criminal offense. In a sense any conduct in this interd e- pendent world of ours has an ultimate commercial origin or consequence, but we have not yet said the commerce power may reach so far" (citation omitted)). Lopez's re- view of Commerce Clause case law demonstrates that in those cases where we have sustained federal regulation of intrastate activity based upon the activity's substantial effects on interstate commerce, the activity in question has been some sort of economic endeavor. See id., at 559­ 560.4 The second consideration that we found important in analyzing §922(q) was that the statute contained "no express jurisdictional element which might limit its reach to a discrete set of firearm possessions that additionally have an explicit connection with or effect on interstate commerce." Id., at 562. Such a jurisdictional element may establish that the enactment is in pursuance of Congress' regulation of interstate commerce. Third, we noted that neither §922(q) " `nor its legislative history contain[s] express congressional findings regarding the effects upon interstate commerce of gun possession in a school zone.' " Ibid. (quoting Brief for United States, O.T. 1994, No. 93­1260, pp. 5­6). While "Congress nor- - - - - - - 4 JUSTICE SOUTER's dissent does not reconcile its analysis with our holding in Lopez because it apparently would cast that decision aside. See post, at 10­16. However, the dissent cannot persuasively contr a- dict Lopez's conclusion that, in every case where we have sustained federal regulation under Wickard's aggregation principle, the regulated activity was of an apparent commercial character. See, e.g., Lopez, 514 U. S., at 559­560, 580. 12 UNITED STATES v. MORRISON Opinion of the Court mally is not required to make formal findings as to the substantial burdens that an activity has on interstate commerce," 514 U. S., at 562 (citing McClung, 379 U. S., at 304; Perez, 402 U. S., at 156), the existence of such fin d- ings may "enable us to evaluate the legislative judgment that the activity in question substantially affect[s] inte r- state commerce, even though no such substantial effect [is] visible to the naked eye." 514 U. S., at 563. Finally, our decision in Lopez rested in part on the fact that the link between gun possession and a substantial effect on interstate commerce was attenuated. Id., at 563­ 567. The United States argued that the possession of guns may lead to violent crime, and that violent crime "can be expected to affect the functioning of the national economy in two ways. First, the costs of violent crime are substa n- tial, and, through the mechanism of insurance, those costs are spread throughout the population. Second, violent crime reduces the willingness of individuals to travel to areas within the country that are perceived to be unsafe." Id., at 563­564 (citation omitted). The Government also argued that the presence of guns at schools poses a threat to the educational process, which in turn threatens to produce a less efficient and productive workforce, which will negatively affect national productivity and thus inte r- state commerce. Ibid. We rejected these "costs of crime" and "national produ c- tivity" arguments because they would permit Congress to "regulate not only all violent crime, but all activities that might lead to violent crime, regardless of how tenuously they relate to interstate commerce." Id., at 564. We noted that, under this but-for reasoning: "Congress could regulate any activity that it found was related to the economic productivity of individual citizens: family law (including marriage, divorce, and child custody), for example. Under the[se] theories Cite as: 529 U. S. ____ (2000) 13 Opinion of the Court . . . , it is difficult to perceive any limitation on federal power, even in areas such as criminal law enforc e- ment or education where States historically have been sovereign. Thus, if we were to accept the Govern- ment's arguments, we are hard pressed to posit any activity by an individual that Congress is without power to regulate." Ibid. With these principles underlying our Commerce Clause jurisprudence as reference points, the proper resolution of the present cases is clear. Gender-motivated crimes of violence are not, in any sense of the phrase, economic activity. While we need not adopt a categorical rule against aggregating the effects of any noneconomic acti v- ity in order to decide these cases, thus far in our Nation's history our cases have upheld Commerce Clause regul a- tion of intrastate activity only where that activity is eco- nomic in nature. See, e.g., id., at 559­560, and the cases cited therein. Like the Gun-Free School Zones Act at issue in Lopez, §13981 contains no jurisdictional element establishing that the federal cause of action is in pursuance of Co n- gress' power to regulate interstate commerce. Although Lopez makes clear that such a jurisdictional element would lend support to the argument that §13981 is suff i- ciently tied to interstate commerce, Congress elected to cast §13981's remedy over a wider, and more purely intr a- state, body of violent crime.5 - - - - - - 5 Title 42 U. S. C. §13981 is not the sole provision of the Violence Against Women Act of 1994 to provide a federal remedy for gender- motivated crime. Section 40221(a) of the Act creates a federal criminal remedy to punish "interstate crimes of abuse including crimes commi t- ted against spouses or intimate partners during interstate travel and crimes committed by spouses or intimate partners who cross State lines to continue the abuse." S. Rep. No. 103­138, p. 43 (1993). That crimi- nal provision has been codified at 18 U. S. C. §2261(a)(1), which states: 14 UNITED STATES v. MORRISON Opinion of the Court In contrast with the lack of congressional findings that we faced in Lopez, §13981 is supported by numerous find- ings regarding the serious impact that gender-motivated violence has on victims and their families. See, e.g., H. R. Conf. Rep. No. 103­711, p. 385 (1994); S. Rep. No. 103­ 138, p. 40 (1993); S. Rep. No. 101­545, p. 33 (1990). But the existence of congressional findings is not sufficient, by itself, to sustain the constitutionality of Commerce Clause legislation. As we stated in Lopez, " `[S]imply because Con- gress may conclude that a particular activity substantially affects interstate commerce does not necessarily make it so.' " 514 U. S., at 557, n. 2 (quoting Hodel, 452 U. S., at 311 (REHNQUIST, J., concurring in judgment)). Rather, " `[w]hether particular operations affect interstate com- merce sufficiently to come under the constitutional power of Congress to regulate them is ultimately a judicial rather than a legislative question, and can be settled finally only by this Court.' " 514 U. S., at 557, n. 2 (quoting Heart of Atlanta Motel, 379 U. S., at 273 (Black, J., concurring)). In these cases, Congress' findings are substantially weakened by the fact that they rely so heavily on a method of reasoning that we have already rejected as unworkable if we are to maintain the Constitution's enumeration of - - - - - - "A person who travels across a State line or enters or leaves Indian country with the intent to injure, harass, or intimidate that person's spouse or intimate partner, and who, in the course of or as a result of such travel, intentionally commits a crime of violence and thereby causes bodily injury to such spouse or intimate partner, shall be pu n- ished as provided in subsection (b)." The Courts of Appeals have uniformly upheld this criminal sanction as an appropriate exercise of Congress' Commerce Clause authority, reasoning that "[t]he provision properly falls within the first of Lopez's categories as it regulates the use of channels of interstate commerce- i.e., the use of the interstate transportation routes through which pe r- sons and goods move." United States v. Lankford, 196 F. 3d 563, 571­ 572 (CA5 1999) (collecting cases) (internal quotation marks omi tted). Cite as: 529 U. S. ____ (2000) 15 Opinion of the Court powers. Congress found that gender-motivated violence affects interstate commerce "by deterring potential victims from traveling inter- state, from engaging in employment in interstate business, and from transacting with business, and in places involved in interstate commerce; . . . by dimin- ishing national productivity, increasing medical and other costs, and decreasing the supply of and the d e- mand for interstate products." H. R. Conf. Rep. No. 103­711, at 385. Accord, S. Rep. No. 103­138, at 54. Given these findings and petitioners' arguments, the concern that we expressed in Lopez that Congress might use the Commerce Clause to completely obliterate the Constitution's distinction b e- tween national and local authority seems well founded. See Lopez, supra, at 564. The reasoning that petitioners advance seeks to follow the but-for causal chain from the initial occurrence of violent crime (the suppression of which has always been the prime object of the States' police power) to every attenuated effect upon interstate commerce. If accepted, petitioners' reasoning would allow Congress to regulate any crime as long as the nationwide, aggregated impact of that crime has substantial effects on employment, production, transit, or consumption. Indeed, if Congress may regulate gender-motivated violence, it would be able to regulate murder or any other type of violence since gender-motivated violence, as a subset of all violent crime, is certain to have lesser economic impacts than the larger class of which it is a part. Petitioners' reasoning, moreover, will not limit Congress to regulating violence but may, as we suggested in Lopez, be applied equally as well to family law and other areas of traditional state regulation since the aggregate effect of marriage, divorce, and childrearing on the national econ- 16 UNITED STATES v. MORRISON Opinion of the Court omy is undoubtedly significant. Congress may have re c- ognized this specter when it expressly precluded §13981 from being used in the family law context. 6 See 42 U. S. C. §13981(e)(4). Under our written Constitution, however, the limitation of congressional authority is not solely a matter of legislative grace.7 See Lopez, supra, at 575­579 - - - - - - 6 We are not the first to recognize that the but-for causal chain must have its limits in the Commerce Clause area. In Lopez, 514 U. S., at 567, we quoted Justice Cardozo's concurring opinion in A. L. A. Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States, 295 U. S. 495 (1935): "There is a view of causation that would obliterate the distinction b e- tween what is national and what is local in the activities of commerce. Motion at the outer rim is communicated perceptibly, though minutely, to recording instruments at the center. A society such as ours `is an elastic medium which transmits all tremors throughout its territory; the only question is of their size.' " Id., at 554 (quoting United States v. A. L. A. Schechter Poultry Corp., 76 F. 2d 617, 624 (CA2 1935) (L. Hand, J., concurring)). 7 JUSTICE SOUTER's dissent theory that Gibbons v. Ogden, 9 Wheat. 1 (1824), Garcia v. San Antonio Metropolitan Transit Authority, 469 U. S. 528 (1985), and the Seventeenth Amendment provide the answer to these cases, see post, at 19­26, is remarkable because it undermines this central principle of our constitutional system. As we have repea t- edly noted, the Framers crafted the federal system of government so that the people's rights would be secured by the division of power. See, e.g., Arizona v. Evans, 514 U. S. 1, 30 (1995) (GINSBURG, J., dissenting); Gregory v. Ashcroft, 501 U. S. 452, 458­459 (1991) (cata loging the benefits of the federal design); Atascadero State Hospital v. Scanlon, 473 U. S. 234, 242 (1985) ("The `constitutionally mandated balance of power' between the States and the Federal Government was adopted by the Framers to ensure the protection of `our fundamental liberties' ") (quoting Garcia, supra, at 572 (Powell, J., dissenting)). Departing from their parliamentary past, the Framers adopted a written Constitution that further divided authority at the federal level so that the Constit u- tion's provisions would not be defined solely by the political branches nor the scope of legislative power limited only by public opinion and the legislature's self-restraint. See, e.g., Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137, 176 (1803) (Marshall, C. J.) ("The powers of the legislature are defined and limited; and that those limits may not be mistaken or forgotten, the constitution is written"). It is thus a " `permanent and Cite as: 529 U. S. ____ (2000) 17 Opinion of the Court (KENNEDY, J., concurring); Marbury, 1 Cranch, at 176­ 178. We accordingly reject the argument that Congress may - - - - - - indispensable feature of our constitutional system' " that " `the federal judiciary is supreme in the exposition of the law of the Constitution.' " Miller v. Johnson, 515 U. S. 900, 922­923 (1995) (quoting Cooper v. Aaron, 358 U. S. 1, 18 (1958)). No doubt the political branches have a role in interpreting and applying the Constitution, but ever since Marbury this Court has remained the ultimate expositor of the constitutional text. As we emphasized in United States v. Nixon, 418 U. S. 683 (1974), "[I]n the performance of assigned constitutional duties each branch of the Government must initially interpret the Constitution, and the interpr e- tation of its powers by any branch is due great respect from the ot h- ers. . . . Many decisions of this Court, however, have unequivocally reaffirmed the holding of Marbury . . . that `[i]t is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.' " Id., at 703 (citation omitted). Contrary to JUSTICE SOUTER's suggestion, see post, at 19­21, and n. 14, Gibbons did not exempt the commerce power from this cardinal rule of constitutional law. His assertion that, from Gibbons on, public opinion has been the only restraint on the congressional exercise of the commerce power is true only insofar as it contends that political a c- countability is and has been the only limit on Congress' exercise of the commerce power within that power's outer bounds. As the language surrounding that relied upon by JUSTICE SOUTER makes clear, Gibbons did not remove from this Court the authority to define that boundary. See Gibbons, supra, at 194­195 ("It is not intended to say that these words comprehend that commerce, which is completely internal, which is carried on between man and man in a State, or between different parts of the same State, and which does not extend to or affect other States. . . . Comprehensive as the word `among' is, it may very properly be restricted to that commerce which concerns more States than one. The phrase is not one which would probably have been selected to indicate the completely interior traffic of a State, because it is not an apt phrase for that purpose; and the enumeration of the particular classes of commerce to which the power was to be extended, would not have been made, had the intention been to extend the power to every description. The enumeration presupposes something not enumerated; and that something, if we regard the language or the subject of the sentence, must be the exclusively internal co mmerce of a State"). 18 UNITED STATES v. MORRISON Opinion of the Court regulate noneconomic, violent criminal conduct based solely on that conduct's aggregate effect on interstate commerce. The Constitution requires a distinction b e- tween what is truly national and what is truly local. Lopez, 514 U. S., at 568 (citing Jones & Laughlin Steel, 301 U. S., at 30). In recognizing this fact we preserve one of the few principles that has been consistent since the Clause was adopted. The regulation and punishment of intrastate violence that is not directed at the instrumen- talities, channels, or goods involved in interstate co m- merce has always been the province of the States. See, e.g., Cohens v. Virginia, 6 Wheat. 264, 426, 428 (1821) (Marshall, C. J.) (stating that Congress "has no general right to punish murder committed within any of the States," and that it is "clear . . . that congress cannot punish felonies generally"). Indeed, we can think of no better example of the police power, which the Founders denied the National Government and reposed in the States, than the suppression of violent crime and vindic a- tion of its victims.8 See, e.g., Lopez, 514 U. S., at 566 ("The - - - - - - 8 JUSTICE SOUTER disputes our assertion that the Constitution re- serves the general police power to the States, noting that the Founders failed to adopt several proposals for additional guarantees against federal encroachment on state authority. See post, at 19­22, and n. 14. This argument is belied by the entire structure of the Constitution. With its careful enumeration of federal powers and explicit statement that all powers not granted to the Federal Government are reserved, the Constitution cannot realistically be interpreted as granting the Federal Government an unlimited license to regulate. See, e.g., New York v. United States, 505 U. S. 144, 156­157 (1992). And, as discussed above, the Constitution's separation of federal power and the creation of the Judicial Branch indicate that disputes regarding the extent of co n- gressional power are largely subject to judicial review. See n. 7, supra. Moreover, the principle that " `[t]he Constitution created a Federal Government of limited powers,' " while reserving a generalized police power to the States is deeply ingrained in our constitutional history. New York, supra, at 155 (quoting Gregory v. Ashcroft, supra, at 457; see Cite as: 529 U. S. ____ (2000) 19 Opinion of the Court Constitution . . . withhold[s] from Congress a plenary police power"); id., at 584­585 (THOMAS, J., concurring) ("[W]e always have rejected readings of the Commerce Clause and the scope of federal power that would permit Congress to exercise a police power"), 596­597, and n. 6 (noting that the first Congresses did not enact nationwide punishments for criminal conduct under the Commerce Clause). III Because we conclude that the Commerce Clause does not provide Congress with authority to enact §13981, we address petitioners' alternative argument that the sec- tion's civil remedy should be upheld as an exercise of Congress' remedial power under §5 of the Fourteenth Amendment. As noted above, Congress expressly invoked the Fourteenth Amendment as a source of authority to enact §13981. The principles governing an analysis of congressional legislation under §5 are well settled. Section 5 states that Congress may " `enforce,' by `appropriate legislation' the constitutional guarantee that no State shall deprive any person of `life, liberty or property, without due process of law,' nor deny any person `equal protection of the laws.' " City of Boerne v. Flores, 521 U. S. 507, 517 (1997). Section 5 is "a positive grant of legislative power," Katzenbach v. Morgan, 384 U. S. 641, 651 (1966), that includes authority to "prohibit conduct which is not itself unconstitutional and [to] intrud[e] into `legislative spheres of autonomy previously reserved to the States.' " Flores, supra, at 518 (quoting Fitzpatrick v. Bitzer, 427 U. S. 445, 455 (1976)); - - - - - - also Lopez, 514 U. S., at 584­599 (THOMAS, J., concurring) (discussing the history of the debates surrounding the adoption of the Commerce Clause and our subsequent interpretation of the Clause); Maryland v. Wirtz, 392 U. S. 183, 196 (1968). 20 UNITED STATES v. MORRISON Opinion of the Court see also Kimel v. Florida Bd. of Regents, 528 U. S. ___, ___ (2000) (slip op., at 16). However, "[a]s broad as the co n- gressional enforcement power is, it is not unlimited." Oregon v. Mitchell, 400 U. S. 112, 128 (1970); see also Kimel, supra, at ___­___ (slip op., at 16­17). In fact, as we discuss in detail below, several limitations inherent in §5's text and constitutional context have been recognized since the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted. Petitioners' §5 argument is founded on an assertion that there is pervasive bias in various state justice systems against victims of gender-motivated violence. This asse r- tion is supported by a voluminous congressional record. Specifically, Congress received evidence that many pa r- ticipants in state justice systems are perpetuating an array of erroneous stereotypes and assumptions. Co n- gress concluded that these discriminatory stereotypes often result in insufficient investigation and prosecution of gender-motivated crime, inappropriate focus on the b e- havior and credibility of the victims of that crime, and unacceptably lenient punishments for those who are act u- ally convicted of gender-motivated violence. See H. R. Conf. Rep. No. 103­711, at 385­386; S. Rep. No. 103­138, at 38, 41­55; S. Rep. No. 102­197, at 33­35, 41, 43­47. Petitioners contend that this bias denies victims of gender- motivated violence the equal protection of the laws and that Congress therefore acted appropriately in enacting a private civil remedy against the perpetrators of gender- motivated violence to both remedy the States' bias and deter future instances of discrimination in the state courts. As our cases have established, state-sponsored gender discrimination violates equal protection unless it " `serves "important governmental objectives and . . . the discrimi- natory means employed" are "substantially related to the achievement of those objectives." ' " United States v. Vir- ginia, 518 U. S. 515, 533 (1996) (quoting Mississippi Univ. Cite as: 529 U. S. ____ (2000) 21 Opinion of the Court for Women v. Hogan, 458 U. S. 718, 724 (1982), in turn quoting Wengler v. Druggists Mut. Ins. Co., 446 U. S. 142, 150 (1980)). See also Craig v. Boren, 429 U. S. 190, 198­ 199 (1976). However, the language and purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment place certain limitations on the manner in which Congress may attack discriminatory conduct. These limitations are necessary to prevent the Fourteenth Amendment from obliterating the Framers' carefully crafted balance of power between the States and the National Government. See Flores, supra, at 520­524 (reviewing the history of the Fourteenth Amendment's enactment and discussing the contemporary belief that the Amendment "does not concentrate power in the general government for any purpose of police government within the States") (quoting T. Cooley, Constitutional Limitations 294, n. 1 (2d ed. 1871)). Foremost among these lim itations is the time-honored principle that the Fourteenth Amendment, by its very terms, prohibits only state action. "[T]he principle has become firmly embedded in our co n- stitutional law that the action inhibited by the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment is only such action as may fairly be said to be that of the States. That Amendment erects no shield against merely private conduct, however discriminatory or wrongful." Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 U. S. 1, 13, and n. 12 (1948). Shortly after the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted, we decided two cases interpreting the Amendment's provi- sions, United States v. Harris, 106 U. S. 629 (1883), and the Civil Rights Cases, 109 U. S. 3 (1883). In Harris, the Court considered a challenge to §2 of the Civil Rights Act of 1871. That section sought to punish "private persons" for "conspiring to deprive any one of the equal protection of the laws enacted by the State." 106 U. S., at 639. We concluded that this law exceeded Congress' §5 power because the law was "directed exclusively against the action of private persons, without reference to the laws of 22 UNITED STATES v. MORRISON Opinion of the Court the State, or their administration by her officers." Id., at 640. In so doing, we reemphasized our statement from Virginia v. Rives, 100 U. S. 313, 318 (1880), that " `these provisions of the fourteenth amendment have reference to State action exclusively, and not to any action of private individuals.' " Harris, supra, at 639 (misquotation in Harris). We reached a similar conclusion in the Civil Rights Cases. In those consolidated cases, we held that the public accommodation provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which applied to purely private conduct, were beyond the scope of the §5 enforcement power. 109 U. S., at 11 ("Indi- vidual invasion of individual rights is not the subject- matter of the [Fourteenth] [A]mendment"). See also, e.g., Romer v. Evans, 517 U. S. 620, 628 (1996) ("[I]t was se t- tled early that the Fourteenth Amendment did not give Congress a general power to prohibit discrimination in public accommodations"); Lugar v. Edmondson Oil Co., 457 U. S. 922, 936 (1982) ("Careful adherence to the `state action' requirement preserves an area of individual fre e- dom by limiting the reach of federal law and federal jud i- cial power"); Blum v. Yaretsky, 457 U. S. 991, 1002 (1982); Moose Lodge No. 107 v. Irvis, 407 U. S. 163, 172 (1972); Adickes v. S. H. Kress & Co., 398 U. S. 144, 147 n. 2 (1970); United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U. S. 542, 554 (1876) ("The fourteenth amendment prohibits a state from depriving any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; but this adds nothing to the rights of one citizen as against another. It simply furnishes an additional guaranty against any encroachment by the States upon the fundamental rights which belong to every citizen as a member of society"). The force of the doctrine of stare decisis behind these decisions stems not only from the length of time they have been on the books, but also from the insight attributable to the Members of the Court at that time. Every Member Cite as: 529 U. S. ____ (2000) 23 Opinion of the Court had been appointed by President Lincoln, Grant, Hayes, Garfield, or Arthur- and each of their judicial appointees obviously had intimate knowledge and familiarity with the events surrounding the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment. Petitioners contend that two more recent decisions have in effect overruled this longstanding limitation on Co n- gress' §5 authority. They rely on United States v. Guest, 383 U. S. 745 (1966), for the proposition that the rule laid down in the Civil Rights Cases is no longer good law. In Guest, the Court reversed the construction of an indict- ment under 18 U. S. C. §241, saying in the course of its opinion that "we deal here with issues of statutory co n- struction, not with issues of constitutional power." 383 U. S., at 749. Three Members of the Court, in a separate opinion by Justice Brennan, expressed the view that the Civil Rights Cases were wrongly decided, and that Con- gress could under §5 prohibit actions by private individ u- als. 383 U. S., at 774 (opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part). Three other Members of the Court, who joined the opinion of the Court, joined a separate opinion by Justice Clark which in two or three sentences stated the conclusion that Congress could "punis[h] all conspiracies- with or without state action- that interfere with Fourteenth Amendment rights." Id., at 762 (concur- ring opinion). Justice Harlan, in another separate opi n- ion, commented with respect to the statement by these Justices: "The action of three of the Justices who joined the Court's opinion in nonetheless cursorily pronouncing themselves on the far-reaching constitutional que s- tions deliberately not reached in Part II seems to me, to say the very least, extraordinary." Id., at 762, n. 1 (opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part). Though these three Justices saw fit to opine on matters 24 UNITED STATES v. MORRISON Opinion of the Court not before the Court in Guest, the Court had no occasion to revisit the Civil Rights Cases and Harris, having deter- mined "the indictment [charging private individuals with conspiring to deprive blacks of equal access to state facil i- ties] in fact contain[ed] an express allegation of state involvement." 383 U. S., at 756. The Court concluded that the implicit allegation of "active connivance by agents of the State" eliminated any need to decide "the threshold level that state action must attain in order to create rights under the Equal Protection Clause." Ibid. All of this Justice Clark explicitly acknowledged. See id., at 762 (concurring opinion) ("The Court's interpretation of the indictment clearly avoids the question whether Congress, by appropriate legislation, has the power to punish private conspiracies that interfere with Fourteenth Amendment rights, such as the right to utilize public facilities"). To accept petitioners' argument, moreover, one must add to the three Justices joining Justice Brennan's re a- soned explanation for his belief that the Civil Rights Cases were wrongly decided, the three Justices joining Justice Clark's opinion who gave no explanation whatever for their similar view. This is simply not the way that re a- soned constitutional adjudication proceeds. We accor d- ingly have no hesitation in saying that it would take more than the naked dicta contained in Justice Clark's opinion, when added to Justice Brennan's opinion, to cast any doubt upon the enduring vitality of the Civil Rights Cases and Harris. Petitioners also rely on District of Columbia v. Carter, 409 U. S. 418 (1973). Carter was a case addressing the question whether the District of Columbia was a "State" within the meaning of Rev. Stat. §1979, 42 U. S. C. §1983- a section which by its terms requires state action before it may be employed. A footnote in that opinion recites the same litany respecting Guest that petitioners rely on. This litany is of course entirely dicta, and in any Cite as: 529 U. S. ____ (2000) 25 Opinion of the Court event cannot rise above its source. We believe that the description of the §5 power contained in the Civil Rights Cases is correct: "But where a subject has not submitted to the general legislative power of Congress, but is only submitted thereto for the purpose of rendering effective some prohibition against particular [s]tate legislation or [s]tate action in reference to that subject, the power given is limited by its object, any legislation by Co n- gress in the matter must necessarily be corrective in its character, adapted to counteract and redress the operation of such prohibited state laws or proceedings of [s]tate officers." 109 U. S., at 18. Petitioners alternatively argue that, unlike the si tuation in the Civil Rights Cases, here there has been gender- based disparate treatment by state authorities, whereas in those cases there was no indication of such state action. There is abundant evidence, however, to show that the Congresses that enacted the Civil Rights Acts of 1871 and 1875 had a purpose similar to that of Congress in enacting §13981: There were state laws on the books bespeaking equality of treatment, but in the administr a- tion of these laws there was discrimination against newly freed slaves. The statement of Representative Garfield in the House and that of Senator Sumner in the Senate are representative: "[T]he chief complaint is not that the laws of the State are unequal, but that even where the laws are just and equal on their face, yet, by a systematic mal- administration of them, or a neglect or refusal to e n- force their provisions, a portion of the people are d e- nied equal protection under them." Cong. Globe, 42d Cong., 1st Sess., App. 153 (1871) (statement of Rep. Garfield). "The Legislature of South Carolina has passed a 26 UNITED STATES v. MORRISON Opinion of the Court law giving precisely the rights contained in your `su p- plementary civil rights bill.' But such a law remains a dead letter on her statute-books, because the State courts, comprised largely of those whom the Senator wishes to obtain amnesty for, refuse to enforce it." Cong. Globe, 42d Cong., 2d Sess., 430 (1872) (stat e- ment of Sen. Sumner). See also, e.g., Cong. Globe, 42d Cong., 1st Sess., at 653 (statement of Sen. Osborn); id., at 457 (statement of Rep. Coburn); id., at App. 78 (statement of Rep. Perry); 2 Cong. Rec. 457 (1874) (statement of Rep. Butler); 3 Cong. Rec. 945 (1875) (statement of Rep. Lynch). But even if that distinction were valid, we do not believe it would save §13981's civil remedy. For the remedy is simply not "corrective in its character, adapted to counter- act and redress the operation of such prohibited [s]tate laws or proceedings of [s]tate officers." Civil Rights Cases, 109 U. S., at 18. Or, as we have phrased it in more recent cases, prophylactic legislation under §5 must have a " `congruence and proportionality between the injury to be prevented or remedied and the means adopted to that end." Florida Prepaid Postsecondary Ed. Expense Bd. v. College Savings Bank, 527 U. S. 627, 639 (1999); Flores, 521 U. S., at 526. Section 13981 is not aimed at proscri b- ing discrimination by officials which the Fourteenth Amendment might not itself proscribe; it is directed not at any State or state actor, but at individuals who have committed criminal acts motivated by gender bias. In the present cases, for example, §13981 visits no consequence whatever on any Virginia public official involved in investigating or prosecuting Brzonkala's a s- sault. The section is, therefore, unlike any of the §5 rem e- dies that we have previously upheld. For example, in Katzenbach v. Morgan, 384 U. S. 641 (1966), Congress prohibited New York from imposing literacy tests as a Cite as: 529 U. S. ____ (2000) 27 Opinion of the Court prerequisite for voting because it found that such a r e- quirement disenfranchised thousands of Puerto Rican immigrants who had been educated in the Spanish la n- guage of their home territory. That law, which we upheld, was directed at New York officials who administered the State's election law and prohibited them from using a provision of that law. In South Carolina v. Katzenbach, 383 U. S. 301 (1966), Congress imposed voting rights requirements on States that, Congress found, had a hi s- tory of discriminating against blacks in voting. The re m- edy was also directed at state officials in those States. Similarly, in Ex parte Virginia, 100 U. S. 339 (1880), Congress criminally punished state officials who inte n- tionally discriminated in jury selection; again, the remedy was directed to the culpable state official. Section 13981 is also different from these prev iously upheld remedies in that it applies uniformly throughout the Nation. Congress' findings indicate that the problem of discrimination against the victims of gender-motivated crimes does not exist in all States, or even most States. By contrast, the §5 remedy upheld in Katzenbach v. Morgan, supra, was directed only to the State where the evil found by Congress existed, and in South Carolina v. Katzenbach, supra, the remedy was directed only to those States in which Congress found that there had been discrimination. For these reasons, we conclude that Congress' power under §5 does not extend to the enactment of §13981. IV Petitioner Brzonkala's complaint alleges that she was the victim of a brutal assault. But Congress' effort in §13981 to provide a federal civil remedy can be sustained neither under the Commerce Clause nor under §5 of the Fourteenth Amendment. If the allegations here are true, no civilized system of justice could fail to provide her a 28 UNITED STATES v. MORRISON Opinion of the Court remedy for the conduct of respondent Morrison. But under our federal system that remedy must be provided by the Commonwealth of Virginia, and not by the United States. The judgment of the Court of Appeals is Affirmed. Cite as: 529 U. S. ____ (2000) 1 THOMAS, J., concurring SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES _________________ Nos. 99­5 and 99­29 _________________ UNITED STATES, PETITIONER 99­5 v. ANTONIO J. MORRISON ET AL. CHRISTY BRZONKALA, PETITIONER 99­29 v. ANTONIO J. MORRISON ET AL. ON WRITS OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT [May 15, 2000] JUSTICE THOMAS, concurring. The majority opinion correctly applies our decision in United States v. Lopez, 514 U. S. 549 (1995), and I join it in full. I write separately only to express my view that the very notion of a "substantial effects" test under the Co m- merce Clause is inconsistent with the original unde r- standing of Congress' powers and with this Court's early Commerce Clause cases. By continuing to apply this rootless and malleable standard, however circumscribed, the Court has encouraged the Federal Government to persist in its view that the Commerce Clause has virtually no limits. Until this Court replaces its existing Commerce Clause jurisprudence with a standard more consistent with the original understanding, we will continue to see Congress appropriating state police powers under the guise of regulating commerce. Cite as: 529 U. S. ____ (2000) 1 SOUTER, J., dissenting SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES _________________ Nos. 99­5 and 99­29 _________________ UNITED STATES, PETITIONER 99­5 v. ANTONIO J. MORRISON ET AL. CHRISTY BRZONKALA, PETITIONER 99­29 v. ANTONIO J. MORRISON ET AL. ON WRITS OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT [May 15, 2000] JUSTICE SOUTER, with whom JUSTICE STEVENS, JUSTICE GINSBURG, and JUSTICE BREYER join, dissenting. The Court says both that it leaves Commerce Clause precedent undisturbed and that the Civil Rights Remedy of the Violence Against Women Act of 1994, 42 U. S. C. §13981, exceeds Congress's power under that Clause. I find the claims irreconcilable and respectfully dissent. 1 I Our cases, which remain at least nominally undi s- turbed, stand for the following propositions. Congress has the power to legislate with regard to activity that, in the aggregate, has a substantial effect on interstate co m- merce. See Wickard v. Filburn, 317 U. S. 111, 124­128 (1942); Hodel v. Virginia Surface Mining & Reclamation - - - - - - 1 Finding the law a valid exercise of Commerce Clause power, I have no occasion to reach the question whether it might also be sustained as an exercise of Congress's power to enforce the Fourteenth Amen dment. 2 UNITED STATES v. MORRISON SOUTER, J., dissenting Assn., 452 U. S. 264, 277 (1981). The fact of such a su b- stantial effect is not an issue for the courts in the first instance, ibid., but for the Congress, whose institutional capacity for gathering evidence and taking testimony far exceeds ours. By passing legislation, Congress indicates its conclusion, whether explicitly or not, that facts support its exercise of the commerce power. The business of the courts is to review the congressional assessment, not for soundness but simply for the rationality of concluding that a jurisdictional basis exists in fact. See ibid. Any explicit findings that Congress chooses to make, though not di s- positive of the question of rationality, may advance jud i- cial review by identifying factual authority on which Co n- gress relied. Applying those propositions in these cases can lead to only one conclusion. One obvious difference from United States v. Lopez, 514 U. S. 549 (1995), is the mountain of data assembled by Congress, here showing the effects of violence against women on interstate commerce.2 Passage of the Act in 1994 was preceded by four years of hearings, 3 which in- - - - - - - 2 It is true that these data relate to the effects of violence against women generally, while the civil rights remedy limits its scope to "crimes of violence motivated by gender"- presumably a somewhat narrower subset of acts. See 42 U. S. C. §13981(b). But the meaning of "motivated by gender" has not been elucidated by lower courts, much less by this one, so the degree to which the findings rely on acts not redressable by the civil rights remedy is unclear. As will appear, however, much of the data seems to indicate behavior with just such motivation. In any event, adopting a cramped reading of the statutory text, and thereby increasing the constitutional difficulties, would directly contradict one of the most basic canons of statutory interpret a- tion. See NLRB v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp., 301 U. S. 1, 30 (1937). Having identified the problem of violence against women, Congress may address what it sees as the most threatening manifestation; "reform may take one step at a time." Williamson v. Lee Optical of Okla., Inc., 348 U. S. 483, 489 (1955). 3 See, e.g., Domestic Violence: Terrorism in the Home, Hearing before Cite as: 529 U. S. ____ (2000) 3 SOUTER, J., dissenting cluded testimony from physicians and law professors; 4 from survivors of rape and domestic violence; 5 and from representatives of state law enforcement and private business.6 The record includes reports on gender bias from task forces in 21 States,7 and we have the benefit of - - - - - - the Subcommittee on Children, Family, Drugs and Alcoholism of the Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources, 101st Cong., 2d Sess. (1990) (S. Hearing 101­897); Women and Vi olence, Hearing be- fore the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, 101st Cong., 2d Sess. (1990); Violence Against Women: Victims of the System, Hearing on S. 15 before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, 102d Cong., 1st Sess. (1991) (S. Hearing 102­369); Violence Against Women, Hearing before the Subcommittee on Crime and Criminal Justice of the House Committee on the Judiciary, 102d Cong., 2d Sess. (1992); Hearing on Domestic Violence, Hearing before the Senate Committee on the Ju- diciary, 103d Cong., 1st Sess. (1993) (S. Hearing 103­596); Violent Crimes Against Women, Hearing before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, 103d Cong., 1st Sess. (1993) (S. Hearing 103­726); Violence Against Women: Fighting the Fear, Hearing before the Senate Commi t- tee on the Judiciary, 103d Cong., 1st Sess. (1993) (S. Hearing 103­878); Crimes of Violence Motivated by Gender, Hearing before the Sub- committee on Civil and Constitutional Rights of the House Committee on the Judiciary, 103d Cong., 1st Sess. (1993); Domestic Violence: Not Just a Family Matter, Hearing before the Subcommittee on Crime and Criminal Justice of the House Committee on the Judiciary, 103d Cong., 2d Sess. (1994). 4 See, e.g., S. Hearing 103­596, at 1­4 (testimony of Northeastern Univ. Law School Professor Clare Dalton); S. Hearing 102­369, at 103­ 105 (testimony of Univ. of Chicago Professor Cass Sunstein); S. Hearing 103­878, at 7­11 (testimony of American Medical Assn. president-elect Robert McAfee). 5 See, e.g., id., at 13­17 (testimony of Lisa); id. at 40­42 (testimony of Jennifer Tescher). 6 See, e.g., S. Hearing 102­369, at 24­36, 71­87 (testimony of attor- neys general of Iowa and Illinois); id., at 235­245 (testimony of Na- tional Federation of Business and Professional Women); S. Hearing No. 103­596, at 15­17 (statement of James Hardeman, Manager, Coun- seling Dept., Polaroid Corp.). 7 See Judicial Council of California Advisory Committee on Gender Bias in the Courts, Achieving Equal Justice for Women and Men in the 4 UNITED STATES v. MORRISON SOUTER, J., dissenting specific factual findings in the eight separate Reports issued by Congress and its committees over the long course leading to enactment.8 Compare Hodel, 452 U. S., - - - - - - California Courts (July 1996) (edited version of 1990 report); Colorado Supreme Court Task Force on Gender Bias in the Courts, Gender and Justice in the Colorado Courts (1990); Connecticut Task Force on Gender, Justice and the Courts, Report to the Chief Justice (Sept. 1991); Report of the Florida Supreme Court Gender Bias Study Co m- mission (Mar. 1990); Supreme Court of Georgia, Commission on Gender Bias in the Judicial System, Gender and Justice in the Courts (1991), reprinted in 8 Ga. St. U. L. Rev. 539 (1992); Report of the Illinois Task Force on Gender Bias in the Courts (1990); Equality in the Courts Task Force, State of Iowa, Final Report (Feb. 1993); Kentucky Task Force on Gender Fairness in the Courts, Equal Justice for Women and Men (Jan. 1992); Louisiana Task Force on Women in the Courts, Final Report (1992); Maryland Special Joint Comm., Gender Bias in the Courts (May 1989); Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, Gender Bias Study of the Court System in Massachusetts (1989); Michigan Supreme Court Task Force on Gender Issues in the Courts, Final Report (Dec. 1989); Minnesota Supreme Court Task Force for Gender Fairness in the Courts, Final Report (1989), reprinted in 15 Wm. Mitchell L. Rev. 825 (1989); Nevada Supreme Court Gender Bias Task Force, Justice For Women (1988); New Jersey Supreme Court Task Force on Women in the Courts, Report of the First Year (June 1984); Report of the New York Task Force on Women in the Courts (Mar. 1986); Final Report of the Rhode Island Supreme Court Committee on Women in the Courts (June 1987); Utah Task Force on Gender and Justice, Report to the Utah Judicial Council (Mar. 1990); Vermont Supreme Court and Ver- mont Bar Assn., Gender and Justice: Report of the Vermont Task Force on Gender Bias in the Legal System (Jan. 1991); Washington State Task Force on Gender and Justice in the Courts, Final Report (1989); Wisconsin Equal Justice Task Force, Final Report (Jan. 1991). 8 See S. Rep. No. 101­545 (1990); Majority Staff of Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Violence Against Women: The Increase of Rape in America, 102d Cong., 1st Sess. (Comm. Print 1991); S. Rep. No. 102­ 197 (1991); Majority Staff of Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Vio- lence Against Women: A Week in the Life of America, 102d Cong., 2d Sess. (Comm. Print 1992); S. Rep. No. 103­138 (1993); Majority Staff of Senate Committee on the Judiciary, The Response to Rape: Detours on the Road to Equal Justice, 103d Cong., 1st Sess. (Comm. Print 1993); H. R. Rep. No. 103­395 (1993); H. R. Conf. Rep. No. 103­711 (1994). Cite as: 529 U. S. ____ (2000) 5 SOUTER, J., dissenting at 278­279 (noting "extended hearings," "vast amounts of testimony and documentary evidence," and "years of the most thorough legislative consideration"). With respect to domestic violence, Congress received evidence for the following findings: "Three out of four American women will be victims of violent crimes sometime during their life." H. R. Rep. No. 103­395 p. 25 (1993) (citing U. S. Dept. of Justice, Report to the Nation on Crime and Justice 29 (2d ed. 1988)). "Violence is the leading cause of injuries to women ages 15 to 44 . . . ." S. Rep. No. 103­138, p. 38 (1993) (citing Surgeon General Antonia Novello, From the Surgeon General, U. S. Public Health Services, 267 JAMA 3132 (1992)). "[A]s many as 50 percent of homeless women and children are fleeing domestic violence." S. Rep. No. 101­545, p. 37 (1990) (citing E. Schneider, Legal Re- form Efforts for Battered Women: Past, Present, and Future (July 1990)). "Since 1974, the assault rate against women has outstripped the rate for men by at least twice for some age groups and far more for others." S. Rep. No. 101­ 545, at 30 (citing Bureau of Justice Statistics, Crim i- nal Victimization in the United States (1974) (Table 5))."[B]attering `is the single largest cause of injury to women in the United States.' " S. Rep. No. 101­545, at 37 (quoting Van Hightower & McManus, Limits of State Constitutional Guarantees: Lessons from Ef- forts to Implement Domestic Violence Policies, 49 Pub. Admin. Rev. 269 (May/June 1989). "An estimated 4 million American women are ba t- tered each year by their husbands or partners." H. R. Rep. No. 103­395, at 26 (citing Council on Scientific 6 UNITED STATES v. MORRISON SOUTER, J., dissenting Affairs, American Medical Assn., Violence Against Women: Relevance for Medical Practitioners, 267 JAMA 3184, 3185 (1992). "Over 1 million women in the United States seek medical assistance each year for injuries sustained [from] their husbands or other partners." S. Rep. No. 101­545, at 37 (citing Stark & Flitcraft, Medical Therapy as Repression: The Case of the Battered Woman, Health & Medicine (Summer/Fall 1982). "Between 2,000 and 4,000 women die every year from [domestic] abuse." S. Rep. No. 101­545, at 36 (citing Schneider, supra). "[A]rrest rates may be as low as 1 for every 100 d o- mestic assaults." S. Rep. No. 101­545, at 38 (citing Dutton, Profiling of Wife Assaulters: Preliminary Ev i- dence for Trimodal Analysis, 3 Violence and Victims 5­30 (1988)). "Partial estimates show that violent crime against women costs this country at least 3 billion- not mi l- lion, but billion- dollars a year." S. Rep. No. 101­545, at 33 (citing Schneider, supra, at 4). "[E]stimates suggest that we spend $5 to $10 billion a year on health care, criminal justice, and other s o- cial costs of domestic violence." S. Rep. No. 103­138, at 41 (citing Biden, Domestic Violence: A Crime, Not a Quarrel, Trial 56 (June 1993)). The evidence as to rape was similarly extensive, su p- porting these conclusions: "[The incidence of] rape rose four times as fast as the total national crime rate over the past 10 years." S. Rep. No. 101­545, at 30 (citing Federal Bureau of Investigation Uniform Crime Reports (1988)). "According to one study, close to half a million girls now in high school will be raped before they grad u- ate." S. Rep. No. 101­545, at 31 (citing R. Warshaw, I Cite as: 529 U. S. ____ (2000) 7 SOUTER, J., dissenting Never Called it Rape 117 (1988)). "[One hundred twenty-five thousand] college women can expect to be raped during this- or any- year." S. Rep. No. 101­545, at 43 (citing testimony of Dr. Mary Koss before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Aug. 29, 1990). "[T]hree-quarters of women never go to the movies alone after dark because of the fear of rape and nearly 50 percent do not use public transit alone after dark for the same reason." S. Rep. No. 102­197, p. 38 (1991) (citing M. Gordon & S. Riger, The Female Fear 15 (1989)). "[Forty-one] percent of judges surveyed believed that juries give sexual assault victims less credibility than other crime victims." S. Rep. No. 102­197, at 47 (citing Colorado Supreme Court Task Force on Gender Bias in the Courts, Gender Justice in the Colorado Courts 91 (1990)). "Less than 1 percent of all [rape] victims have co l- lected damages." S. Rep. No. 102­197, at 44 (citing report by Jury Verdict Research, Inc.). " `[A]n individual who commits rape has only about 4 chances in 100 of being arrested, prosecuted, and found guilty of any offense.' " S. Rep. No. 101­545, at 33, n. 30 (quoting H. Feild & L. Bienen, Jurors and Rape: A Study in Psychology and Law 95 (1980)). "Almost one-quarter of convicted rapists never go to prison and another quarter received sentences in local jails where the average sentence is 11 months." S. Rep. No. 103­138, at 38 (citing Majority Staff Re- port of Senate Committee on the Judiciary, The Re- sponse to Rape: Detours on the Road to Equal Justice, 103d Cong., 1st Sess., 2 (Comm. Print 1993)). "[A]lmost 50 percent of rape victims lose their jobs or are forced to quit because of the crime's severity." S. Rep. No. 102­197, at 53 (citing Ellis, Atkeson, & 8 UNITED STATES v. MORRISON SOUTER, J., dissenting Calhoun, An Assessment of Long-Term Reaction to Rape, 90 J. Abnormal Psych., No. 3, p. 264 (1981). Based on the data thus partially summarized, Congress found that "crimes of violence motivated by gender have a su b- stantial adverse effect on interstate commerce, by de- terring potential victims from traveling interstate, from engaging in employment in interstate business, and from transacting with business, and in places i n- volved, in interstate commerce . . .[,] by diminishing national productivity, increasing medical and other costs, and decreasing the supply of and the demand for interstate products . . . ." H. R. Conf. Rep. No. 103­711, p. 385 (1994). Congress thereby explicitly stated the predicate for the exercise of its Commerce Clause power. Is its conclusion irrational in view of the data amassed? True, the metho d- ology of particular studies may be challenged, and some of the figures arrived at may be disputed. But the suff i- ciency of the evidence before Congress to provide a r a- tional basis for the finding cannot seriously be questioned. Cf. Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. v. FCC, 520 U. S. 180, 199 (1997) ("The Constitution gives to Congress the role of weighing conflicting evidence in the legislative process"). Indeed, the legislative record here is far more volum i- nous than the record compiled by Congress and found sufficient in two prior cases upholding Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 against Commerce Clause challenges. In Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc. v. United States, 379 U. S. 241 (1964), and Katzenbach v. McClung, 379 U. S. 294 (1964), the Court referred to evidence showing the conse- quences of racial discrimination by motels and restaurants on interstate commerce. Congress had relied on compe l- ling anecdotal reports that individual instances of segr e- gation cost thousands to millions of dollars. See Civil Cite as: 529 U. S. ____ (2000) 9 SOUTER, J., dissenting Rights- Public Accommodations, Hearings on S. 1732 before the Senate Committee on Commerce, 88th Cong., 1st Sess., App. V, pp. 1383­1387 (1963). Congress also had evidence that the average black family spent substa n- tially less than the average white family in the same in- come range on public accommodations, and that discrim i- nation accounted for much of the difference. H. R. Rep. No. 88­914, pt. 2, pp. 9­10, and Table II (1963) (Addi- tional Views on H. R. 7152 of Hon. William M. McCulloch, Hon. John V. Lindsay, Hon. William T. Cahill, Hon. Ga r- ner E. Shriver, Hon. Clark MacGregor, Hon. Charles McC. Mathias, Hon. James E. Bromwell). While Congress did not, to my knowledge, calculate aggregate dollar values for the nationwide effects of racial discrimination in 1964, in 1994 it did rely on evidence of the harms caused by domestic violence and sexual assault, citing annual costs of $3 billion in 1990, see S. Rep. 101­ 545, and $5 to $10 billion in 1993, see S. Rep. No. 103­ 138, at 41.9 Equally important, though, gender-based violence in the 1990's was shown to operate in a manner similar to racial discrimination in the 1960's in reducing the mobility of employees and their production and con- sumption of goods shipped in interstate commerce. Like racial discrimination, "[g]ender-based violence bars its most likely targets- women- from full partic[ipation] in the national economy." Id., at 54. If the analogy to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is not plain enough, one can always look back a bit further. In Wickard, we upheld the application of the Agricultural Adjustment Act to the planting and consumption of hom e- grown wheat. The effect on interstate commerce in that - - - - - - 9 In other cases, we have accepted dramatically smaller figures. See, e.g., Hodel v. Indiana, 452 U. S. 314, 325, n. 11 (1981) (stating that corn production with a value of $5.16 million "surely is not an insignificant amount of commerce"). 10 UNITED STATES v. MORRISON SOUTER, J., dissenting case followed from the possibility that wheat grown at home for personal consumption could either be drawn into the market by rising prices, or relieve its grower of any need to purchase wheat in the market. See 317 U. S., at 127­129. The Commerce Clause predicate was simply the effect of the production of wheat for home consumption on supply and demand in interstate commerce. Supply and demand for goods in interstate commerce will also be affected by the deaths of 2,000 to 4,000 women annually at the hands of domestic abusers, see S. Rep. No. 101­545, at 36, and by the reduction in the work force by the 100,000 or more rape victims who lose their jobs each year or are forced to quit, see id., at 56, H. R. Rep. No. 103­395, at 25­26. Violence against women may be found to affect interstate commerce and affect it substantially.10 II The Act would have passed muster at any time between Wickard in 1942 and Lopez in 1995, a period in which the law enjoyed a stable understanding that congressional - - - - - - 10 It should go without saying that my view of the limit of the co n- gressional commerce power carries no implication about the wisdom of exercising it to the limit. I and other Members of this Court appearing before Congress have repeatedly argued against the federalization of traditional state crimes and the extension of federal remedies to pro b- lems for which the States have historically taken responsibility and may deal with today if they have the will to do so. See Hearings before a Subcommittee of the House Committee on Appropriations, 104th Cong., 1st Sess., pt. 7, pp. 13­14 (1995) (testimony of J USTICE KEN- NEDY); Hearings on H. R. 4603 before a Subcommittee of the Senate Committee on Appropriations, 103d Cong., 2d Sess., 100­107 (1994) (testimony of JUSTICES KENNEDY and SOUTER). The Judicial Conference of the United States originally opposed the Act, though after the orig- inal bill was amended to include the gender-based animus requirement, the objection was withdrawn for reasons that are not apparent. See Crimes of Violence Motivated by Gender, Hearing before the Sub- committee on Civil and Constitutional Rights of the House Committee on the Judiciary, 103d Cong., 1st Sess., 70­71 (1993). Cite as: 529 U. S. ____ (2000) 11 SOUTER, J., dissenting power under the Commerce Clause, complemented by the authority of the Necessary and Proper Clause, Art. I. §8 cl. 18, extended to all activity that, when aggregated, has a substantial effect on interstate commerce. As already noted, this understanding was secure even against the turmoil at the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, in the aftermath of which the Court not only reaffirmed the cumulative effects and rational basis features of the su b- stantial effects test, see Heart of Atlanta, supra, at 258; McClung, supra, at 301­305, but declined to limit the commerce power through a formal distinction between legislation focused on "commerce" and statutes addressing "moral and social wrong[s]," Heart of Atlanta, supra, at 257. The fact that the Act does not pass muster before the Court today is therefore proof, to a degree that Lopez was not, that the Court's nominal adherence to the substantial effects test is merely that. Although a new jurisprudence has not emerged with any distinctness, it is clear that some congressional conclusions about obviously substa n- tial, cumulative effects on commerce are being assigned lesser values than the once-stable doctrine would assign them. These devaluations are accomplished not by any express repudiation of the substantial effects test or its application through the aggregation of individual conduct, but by supplanting rational basis scrutiny with a new criterion of review. Thus the elusive heart of the majority's analysis in these cases is its statement that Congress's findings of fact are "weakened" by the presence of a disfavored "method of reasoning." Ante, at 14. This seems to suggest that the "substantial effects" analysis is not a factual enquiry, for Congress in the first instance with subsequent judicial review looking only to the rationality of the congressional conclusion, but one of a rather different sort, dependent upon a uniquely judicial competence. 12 UNITED STATES v. MORRISON SOUTER, J., dissenting This new characterization of substantial effects has no support in our cases (the self-fulfilling prophecies of Lopez aside), least of all those the majority cites. Perhaps this explains why the majority is not content to rest on its cited precedent but claims a textual justification for moving toward its new system of congressional deference subject to selective discounts. Thus it purports to rely on the sensible and traditional understanding that the listing in the Constitution of some powers implies the exclusion of others unmentioned. See Gibbons v. Ogden, 9 Wheat. 1, 195 (1824); ante, at 10; The Federalist No. 45, p. 313 (J. Cooke ed. 1961) (J. Madison).11 The majority stresses that Art. I, §8, enumerates the powers of Congress, i n- cluding the commerce power, an enumeration implying the exclusion of powers not enumerated. It follows, for the majority, not only that there must be some limits to "commerce," but that some particular subjects arguably within the commerce power can be identified in advance - - - - - - 11 The claim that powers not granted were withheld was the chief Federalist argument against the necessity of a bill of rights. Bills of rights, Hamilton claimed, "have no application to constitutions pr o- fessedly founded upon the power of the people, and executed by their immediate representatives and servants. Here, in strictness, the people surrender nothing, and as they retain every thing, they have no need of particular reservations." The Federalist No. 84, at 578. James Wilson went further in the Pennsylvania ratifying convention, asser t- ing that an enumeration of rights was positively dangerous because it suggested, conversely, that every right not reserved was surrendered. See 2 J. Elliot, Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Ado p- tion of the Federal Constitution 436­437 (2d ed. 1863) (hereinafter Elliot's Debates). The Federalists did not, of course, prevail on this point; most States voted for the Constitution only after proposing amendments and the First Congress speedily adopted a Bill of Rights. See Garcia v. San Antonio Metropolitan Transit Authority, 469 U. S. 528, 569 (1985) (Powell, J., dissenting). While that document protected a range of specific individual rights against federal infringement, it did not, with the possible exception of the Second Amendment, offer any similarly specific protections to areas of state sovereignty. Cite as: 529 U. S. ____ (2000) 13 SOUTER, J., dissenting as excluded, on the basis of characteristics other than their commercial effects. Such exclusions come into sight when the activity regulated is not itself commercial or when the States have traditionally addressed it in the exercise of the general police power, conferred under the state constitutions but never extended to Congress under the Constitution of the Nation, see Lopez, 514 U. S., at 566. Ante, at 16. The premise that the enumeration of powers implies that other powers are withheld is sound; the conclusion that some particular categories of subject matter are therefore presumptively beyond the reach of the commerce power is, however, a non sequitur. From the fact that Art. I, §8, cl. 3 grants an authority limited to regulating commerce, it follows only that Congress may claim no au- thority under that section to address any subject that does not affect commerce. It does not at all follow that an ac- tivity affecting commerce nonetheless falls outside the commerce power, depending on the specific character of the activity, or the authority of a State to regulate it along with Congress.12 My disagreement with the majority is not, however, confined to logic, for history has shown that categorical exclusions have proven as unworkable in pra c- tice as they are unsupportable in theory. - - - - - - 12 To the contrary, we have always recognized that while the federal commerce power may overlap the reserved state police power, in such cases federal authority is supreme. See, e.g., Lake Shore & Michigan Southern R. Co. v. Ohio, 173 U. S. 285, 297­298 (1899) ("When Congress acts with reference to a matter confided to it by the Constitution, then its statutes displace all conflicting local regulations touching that matter, although such regulations may have been established in pursuance of a power not surrendered by the States to the General Government"); United States v. California, 297 U. S. 175, 185 (1936) ("[W]e look to the activities in which the states have traditionally engaged as marking the boundary of the restriction upon the federal taxing power. But there is no such limitation upon the plenary power to regulate commerce"). 14 UNITED STATES v. MORRISON SOUTER, J., dissenting A Obviously, it would not be inconsistent with the text of the Commerce Clause itself to declare "noncommercial" primary activity beyond or presumptively beyond the scope of the commerce power. That variant of categorical approach is not, however, the sole textually permissible way of defining the scope of the Commerce Clause, and any such neat limitation would at least be suspect in the light of the final sentence of Article I, §8, authorizing Congress to make "all Laws . . . necessary and proper" to give effect to its enumerated powers such as commerce