Overwhelming evidence, in study after study, shows that men are victimized by domestic violence at least as often as, if not more than, women. Justice Souter uses several such 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 target of a little more than one 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 logic of this case might undermine the Endangered Species Act, but it might also 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.