Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/19pdf/18-877_dc8f.pdf
Page Number: 18.0

Cite as:  589 U. S. ____ (2020) 

15 

Opinion of the Court 

law” and “will continue to respect the law”; what State, af-
ter all, would “want[ ] to get a reputation as a copyright pi-
rate?”  Id., at 8.  The bill’s House and Senate sponsors got 
the point.  The former admitted that “there have not been 
any significant number” of copyright violations by  States. 
Id., at 48 (Rep. Kastenmeier).  And the latter conceded he 
could not currently see “a big problem.”  Hearings on S. 497
before  the  Subcommittee  on  Patents,  Copyrights  and
Trademarks,  101st  Cong.,  1st  Sess.,  130  (1989)  (Sen.
DeConcini).  This is not, to put the matter charitably, the
stuff from which Section 5 legislation ordinarily arises.

And it gets only worse.  Neither the Oman Report nor any
other  part  of  the  legislative  record  shows  concern  with 
whether the States’ copyright infringements (however few 
and far between) violated the Due Process Clause.  Of the 
12 infringements listed in the report, only two appear in-
tentional,  as  they  must  be  to  raise  a  constitutional  issue.
See Oman Report, at 7–8, 91 (describing a judicial finding 
of  “willful”  infringement  and  a  public  comment  charging 
continued  infringement  after  a  copyright  owner  com-
plained).  As Oman testified, the far greater problem was
the frequency of “honest mistakes” or “innocent” misunder-
standings;  the  benefit  of  the  bill,  he  therefore  thought, 
would  be  to  “guard  against  sloppiness.”    House  Hearings, 
at 9.  Likewise, the legislative record contains no informa-
tion about the availability of state-law remedies for copyright
infringement  (such  as  contract  or  unjust  enrichment
suits)—even though they might themselves satisfy due pro-
cess.  Those deficiencies in the record match the ones Flor-
ida Prepaid emphasized.  See 527 U. S., at 643–645.  Here 
no less than there, they signal an absence of constitutional 
harm. 

Under  Florida  Prepaid,  the  CRCA  thus  must  fail  our 
“congruence and proportionality” test.  Boerne, 521 U. S., at 
520.  As just shown, the evidence of Fourteenth Amendment 
injury supporting the CRCA and the Patent Remedy Act is