Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/529bv.pdf
Page Number: 711

529US3

Unit: $U54

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636

UNITED STATES v. MORRISON

Souter, J., dissenting

discrimination in the 1960’s in reducing the mobility of
employees and their production and consumption of goods
shipped in interstate commerce. Like racial discrimina-
tion, “[g]ender-based violence bars its most likely targets—
women—from full partic[ipation] in the national economy.”
Id., at 54.

If the analogy to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is not plain
enough, one can always look back a bit further.
In Wickard,
we upheld the application of the Agricultural Adjustment
Act to the planting and consumption of homegrown wheat.
The effect on interstate commerce in that case followed from
the possibility that wheat grown at home for personal con-
sumption could either be drawn into the market by rising
prices, or relieve its grower of any need to purchase wheat
in the market. See 317 U. S., at 127–129. The Commerce
Clause predicate was simply the effect of the production of
wheat for home consumption on supply and demand in inter-
state commerce. Supply and demand for goods in interstate
commerce will also be affected by the deaths of 2,000 to
4,000 women annually at the hands of domestic abusers,
see S. Rep. No. 101–545, at 36, and by the reduction in
the work force by the 100,000 or more rape victims who
lose their jobs each year or are forced to quit, see id., at 56;
H. R. Rep. No. 103–395, at 25–26. Violence against women
may be found to affect interstate commerce and affect it
substantially.10

10 It should go without saying that my view of the limit of the con-
gressional commerce power carries no implication about the wisdom of
exercising it to the limit.
I and other Members of this Court appearing
before Congress have repeatedly argued against the federalization of tra-
ditional state crimes and the extension of federal remedies to problems
for which the States have historically taken responsibility and may deal
with today if they have the will to do so. See Hearings before a Sub-
committee of the House Committee on Appropriations, 104th Cong., 1st
Sess., pt. 7, pp. 13–14 (1995) (testimony of Justice Kennedy); Hearings
on H. R. 4603 before a Subcommittee of the Senate Committee on Appro-
priations, 103d Cong., 2d Sess., 100–107 (1994) (testimony of Justices