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UNITED STATES v. MORRISON

Opinion of the Court

Evans, 517 U. S. 620, 628 (1996) (“[I]t was settled 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 pre-
serves an area of individual freedom by limiting the reach
of federal law and federal judicial 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, with-
out due process of law; but this adds nothing to the rights
of one citizen as against another.
It simply furnishes an ad-
ditional 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 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 sur-
rounding the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Petitioners contend that two more recent decisions have
in effect overruled this longstanding limitation on Congress’
§ 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 indictment under 18
U. S. C. § 241, saying in the course of its opinion that “we
deal here with issues of statutory construction, 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