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UNITED STATES v. MORRISON

Opinion of the Court

ence 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 proscribing 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 con-
sequence whatever on any Virginia public ofﬁcial involved in
investigating or prosecuting Brzonkala’s assault. The sec-
tion is, therefore, unlike any of the § 5 remedies 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 prerequisite for voting because
it found that such a requirement disenfranchised thousands
of Puerto Rican immigrants who had been educated in the
Spanish language of their home territory. That law, which
we upheld, was directed at New York ofﬁcials who adminis-
tered 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 re-
quirements on States that, Congress found, had a history
of discriminating against blacks in voting. The remedy 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 intentionally discriminated in
jury selection; again, the remedy was directed to the culpa-
ble state ofﬁcial.

Section 13981 is also different from these previously up-
held remedies in that it applies uniformly throughout the
Nation. Congress’ ﬁndings indicate that the problem of dis-
crimination against the victims of gender-motivated crimes
does not exist in all States, or even most States. By con-
trast, the § 5 remedy upheld in Katzenbach v. Morgan, supra,