Overwhelming evidence, in study after study, shows that men are victimized by domestic violence at least as often as women. Justice Souter used several of these bogus statistics in his dissent. But suppose all these famous factoids were true. VAWA is a hate-crime law for women. Like all hate-crime legislation, it imposes a burden to show that bias against a class of people was the true motive for crime.
Women are the targets of slightly more than a third of America's violent crime.
Congress has no idea. It turned up no statistics, because no credible ones exist. But federalism cuts across the agendas of left and right. The Supreme Court's logic in this case might undermine the Endangered Species Act, but it also might strike down a national law banning partial-birth abortion. In that case, we would surely see a lot of liberals discovering the virtues of limited government and deploring the poetic use of the commerce clause.