Opinion ID: 775824
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Congruence and Proportionality

Text: 85 The FMLA takes a modest step towards eliminating the negative impact of, and discrimination based upon, the stereotypical gender roles that have restricted women's opportunities in the workplace. The FMLA, once again, requires only that an employee receive an optional 12-week-maximum, unpaid, equivalent-job-guaranteed leave, without loss of benefits, if he or she, or another immediate family member, suffers a serious health condition or if a child is born to or adopted by the employee. §§§§ 2612(a), 2614(a). 30 86 The FMLA, of course, does not simply prohibit employment discrimination on the basis of sex or pregnancy -Congress had already prohibited such discrimination in Title VII and the Pregnancy Discrimination Act. And Congress may not use its section 5 powers to redefine the substantive rights guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment. City of Boerne, 521 U.S. at 519 (Congress does not enforce a constitutional right by changing what the right is.). But remedial legislation under section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment, we reiterate, may reach state conduct that would survive constitutional scrutiny under the Amendment. See Kimel, 528 U.S. at 81 (Congress' §§ 5 power is not confined to the enactment of legislation that merely parrots the precise wording of the Fourteenth Amendment. Rather, Congress' power `to enforce' the Amendment includes the authority both to remedy and to deter violation of rights guaranteed thereunder by prohibiting a somewhat broader swath of conduct, including that which is not itself forbidden by the Amendment's text.); see also City of Boerne, 521 U.S. at 518 (Legislation which deters or remedies constitutional violations can fall within the sweep of Congress' enforcement power even if in the process it prohibits conduct which is not itself unconstitutional and intrudes into `legislative spheres of autonomy previously reserved to the States.'  (quoting Fitzpatrick v. Bitzer, 427 U.S. 445, 455 (1976))). 87 As recounted above, in enacting the FMLA, Congress appropriately sought to counteract the various problems for gender equality in public and private workplaces created by workplace policies that reflect traditional, formerly statesupported assumptions about gender roles in the domestic and public spheres. Additionally, Congress sought to deter future intentional discrimination against women based on those same stereotypes. 88 There is, as we have seen, ample precedent, consistent with the Supreme Court's recent section 5 jurisprudence, for such reasonably prophylactic legislation to remedy difficult and intractable problems. Kimel, 528 U.S. at 88; Virginia, 518 U.S. at 547 (A proper remedy for an unconstitutional exclusion . . . aims `to eliminate [so far as possible] the discriminatory effects of the past' . . . . (quoting Louisiana v. United States, 380 U.S. 145, 154 (1965))). Most relevant here, carefully crafted legislation that recognizes and seeks to cure the continuing negative impact of pervasive past unconstitutional state discrimination therefore can come within Congress' section 5 authority. South Carolina v. Katzenbach , 383 U.S. 301, 334 (1966) (Congress knew that continuance of the tests and devices in use at the present time, no matter how fairly administered in the future, would freeze the effect of past discrimination in favor of unqualified white registrants. (emphasis added)); see also Lopez v. Monterey County, 525 U.S. 266, 283 (1999) (Congress may guard against both discriminatory animus and the potentially harmful effect of neutral laws . . . . (emphasis in original)); City of Rome v. United States, 446 U.S. 156, 176 (1980) (Congress may, under the authority of section 2 of the Fifteenth Amendment, prohibit state action that . . . perpetuates the effects of past discrimination.); id. (construing the various opinions in Oregon v. Mitchell, 400 U.S. 112 (1970), as similarly permitting legislation that attack[s] the perpetuation of earlier, purposeful racial discrimination); cf. City of Boerne, 521 U.S. at 528 (noting that the voting rights provision requiring New York to permit most Puerto Ricans to vote despite inability to read English, upheld in Katzenbach v. Morgan, 384 U.S. 641(1966),could be justified as a remedial measure to deal with `discrimination in governmental services,'  because that rationale rested on unconstitutional discrimination by New York and Congress' reasonable attempt to combat it.). 31 89 As to the congruence and proportionality between the injury to be prevented or remedied and the means adopted to that end, Garrett, 121 S. Ct. at 963 (quoting City of Boerne, 521 U.S. at 520), congruence and proportionality of remedial legislation must be judged with reference to the historical experience it reflects. City of Boerne, 521 U.S. at 525 (alterations in original omitted). Thus, we must view the FMLA against the continuing impact of nearly two centuries of systemic state sex discrimination in employment and related laws. In light of this historical experience,  the FMLA congruently and proportionately remedies the contemporary impact of such constitutional violations. 90 First, the targeted FMLA provision here at issue focuses only on one type of policy of public and private employers, one that quite directly reflects the interaction between workplace and domestic duties at the core of the unconstitutional state legislation summarized above. The prior state legislation sought to police a gender-specific division of labor, separating the domestic, female sphere from the workplace, male realm. The limited FMLA protection of family care leave seeks to counteract that historical division in all the interrelated ways already discussed. 91 Moreover, although the history of unconstitutional state legislation recounted above was directed against the workplace participation of women, Congress had excellent reasons, noted in the statute's Findings and Purposes and in its legislative history, for choosing a gender-neutral solution to the problem of inequality in the workplace thus fostered. For one thing, the Constitution almost surely so requires. For another, the same gender stereotyping that underlay the legislation limiting women's workplace options also limited the options of men who wished to participate more fully in their family's domestic lives than traditionally had been the case. Third, protecting the leave rights of women only would have the perverse effect of both reinforcing the traditional stereotypes generally and, more specifically, fostering subtle discrimination against the hiring of women because of their protected right to leave. See §§ 2601(a)(6) (employment standards that apply to one gender only have serious potential for encouraging employers to discriminate against employees and applicants for employment who are of that gender). So one more targeted option for remedying past state discrimination against women in employment -that of assuring family care leave for women alone -was simply not viable. 92 Additionally, the FMLA's intrusion into a state employer's policy options is narrow: The FMLA impacts only the states' public employee leave plans, and does so in a limited way. The statute addresses only the policies of larger employing entities. Further, the statute protects job security, not wage continuation. As such, the FMLA is not principally concerned with providing an economic benefit. Instead, the statute is directed at assuring the ability of women to participate in the workforce despite their still-greater role in caring for ill relatives, and of men to take on domestic responsibilities without foregoing their employment. 93 In addition, the FMLA does not require job security for the employer's most highly paid (top 10%) salaried employees if restoration would cause substantial and grievous economic injury. §§ 2614(b). And the Act sidesteps the political arena by expressly excluding states' elected officials, their staffs, and appointed policy makers from its coverage. §§ 2611(3) (adopting the definition of employee used in the FLSA, 29 U.S.C. §§ 203(e)). 94 Finally, although the FMLA does not include a time limitation for its requirements, the Act did establish a Commission to study the impact of the legislation and to report to Congress concerning any appropriate statutory modifications, 29 U.S.C. §§§§ 2631, 2632, which the Commission did. Commission on Family and Medical Leave, A Workable Balance: Report to Congress on Family and Medical Leave Policies (1996). 95 Thus, as a remedy for the current impact of the long history of state-enforced discrimination against women in employment, the FMLA is appropriately classified with the Voting Rights Act, upheld in South Carolina, 383 U.S. at 315, and its progeny. Like that Act, the FMLA family leave provisions affected a discrete class of state laws. In contrast, the [s]weeping coverage of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, struck down in City of Boerne, 521 U.S. at 532, intruded at every level of government, displacing laws and prohibiting official actions of almost every description and regardless of subject matter. As well-targeted legislation designed to remedy the long history of state-supported treatment of women as marginal workers, the requirement that states in their own employment practices assure that the traditional stereotypes are no longer hampering women's workplace participation is a modest one indeed. 96 In short, by ensuring that an employee can attend to the most important of family duties but still retain his or her job (or its equivalent), the FMLA remedies to some extent the skewed labor market that had developed in reliance on statesponsored gender roles. As such, the FMLA family care provisions respond in a congruent manner to a specific sort of pervasive unconstitutional state action, of the kind missing in the Supreme Court's recent Fourteenth Amendment section 5 cases. The statute also enacted modest provisions, proportional in their sweep to Congress' important goal of counteracting the impact of stereotypes regarding the family and workplace roles of men and women fostered by unconstitutional state legislation. For these reasons as well as those already discussed, we conclude that Congress acted within its authority under section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment in enacting the family care provisions of the FMLA.