Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/529bv.pdf
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Cite as: 529 U. S. 598 (2000)

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Opinion of the Court

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 citi-
zens: family law (including marriage, divorce, and child
custody), for example. Under the[se] theories . . . , it is
difﬁcult to perceive any limitation on federal power,
even in areas such as criminal law enforcement or edu-
cation where States historically have been sovereign.
Thus, if we were to accept the Government’s arguments,
we are hard pressed to posit any activity by an individ-
Ibid.
ual that Congress is without power to regulate.”

With these principles underlying our Commerce Clause
jurisprudence as reference points, the proper resolution of
the present cases is clear. Gender-motivated crimes of vio-
lence are not, in any sense of the phrase, economic activity.
While we need not adopt a categorical rule against aggre-
gating the effects of any noneconomic activity in order to
decide these cases, thus far in our Nation’s history our cases
have upheld Commerce Clause regulation of intrastate activ-
ity only where that activity is economic in nature. See, e. g.,
id., at 559–560, 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 Congress’ power
to regulate interstate commerce. Although Lopez makes
clear that such a jurisdictional element would lend support
to the argument that § 13981 is sufﬁciently tied to interstate
commerce, Congress elected to cast § 13981’s remedy over a
wider, and more purely intrastate, 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