Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/529bv.pdf
Page Number: 740

529US3

Unit: $U54

[10-04-01 09:35:40] PAGES PGT: OPIN

Cite as: 529 U. S. 598 (2000)

665

Breyer, J., dissenting

of individuals in society towards each other, . . . without re-
ferring in any manner to any supposed action of the State or
its authorities”).

The Court responds directly to the relevant “state actor”
claim by ﬁnding that the present law lacks “ ‘congruence and
proportionality’ ” to the state discrimination that it purports
to remedy. Ante, at 625–626; see City of Boerne v. Flores,
521 U. S. 507, 526 (1997). That is because the law, unlike
federal laws prohibiting literacy tests for voting, imposing
voting rights requirements, or punishing state ofﬁcials who
intentionally discriminated in jury selection, Katzenbach v.
Morgan, 384 U. S. 641 (1966); South Carolina v. Katzenbach,
383 U. S. 301 (1966); Ex parte Virginia, 100 U. S. 339 (1880),
is not “directed .
. at any State or state actor.” Ante,
at 626.

.

But why can Congress not provide a remedy against
private actors? Those private actors, of course, did not
themselves violate the Constitution. But this Court has
held that Congress at least sometimes can enact remedial
“[l]egislation . . . [that] prohibits conduct which is not itself
unconstitutional.” Flores, supra, at 518; see also Katzen-
bach v. Morgan, supra, at 651; South Carolina v. Katzen-
bach, supra, at 308. The statutory remedy does not in any
sense purport to “determine what constitutes a constitu-
It intrudes little
tional violation.” Flores, supra, at 519.
upon either States or private parties.
It may lead state
actors to improve their own remedial systems, primarily
It restricts private actors only by im-
through example.
posing liability for private conduct that is, in the main, al-
ready forbidden by state law. Why is the remedy “dispro-
portionate”? And given the relation between remedy and
violation—the creation of a federal remedy to substitute for
constitutionally inadequate state remedies—where is the
lack of “congruence”?

The majority adds that Congress found that the problem
of inadequacy of state remedies “does not exist in all States,