Opinion ID: 775824
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Valid Exercise of the Section 5 Power

Text: 21
22 Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment gives Congress the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of the amendment. U.S. Const. amend. XIV,§§ 5. Valid section 5 legislation must be aimed at remedying or deterring violations of the Fourteenth Amendment's substantive provisions, but it is not limited to mere legislative repetition of [the Supreme Court's] constitutional jurisprudence. Garrett, 121 S. Ct. at 963; see also Kimel, 528 U.S. at 81. Because [d]ifficult and intractable problems often require powerful remedies, id. at 89, 120 S. Ct. 631, 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,  id. at 81, 120 S. Ct 631. See Garrett, 121 S. Ct. at 963. 23 In enacting such prophylactic legislation, however, Congress must not cross the line between appropriate remedial legislation and legislation that amounts tosubstantive redefinition of the Fourteenth Amendment right at issue. Kimel, 528 U.S. at 81. The Supreme Court has policed this boundary by requiring that there be  `a congruence and proportionality between the injury to be prevented or remedied and the means adopted to that end.'  Id. (quoting City of Boerne v. Flores, 521 U.S. 507, 520 (1997)); see also Garrett, 121 S. Ct. at 963. The congruence and proportionality inquiry requires a reviewing court (1) to identify with some precision the scope of the constitutional right at issue,  Garrett, 121 S. Ct. at 963, and (2) to determine whether the statute in question is an appropriate remedy for violations of that right, perhaps by scrutinizing the statute's legislative history, Kimel, 528 U.S. at 88. See also id. at 89, 120 S. Ct. 631 ( `The appropriateness of remedial measures must be considered in light of the evil presented. Strong measures appropriate to address one harm may be an unwarranted response to another, lesser one.'  (quoting City of Boerne, 521 U.S. at 530)). 6 24 The recent Supreme Court cases developing and applying this doctrine have dealt with federal statutes that prohibit discrimination on the basis of age and disability. See Garrett, 121 S. Ct. at 967-68 (holding that the ADA is not valid section 5 legislation); Kimel, 528 U.S. at 91, 120 S. Ct. 631(same with respect to the ADEA). The Court's analyses in those cases depended heavily upon the fact that age and disability classifications are not subject to heightened scrutiny under the Equal Protection Clause. See Garrett, 121 S. Ct. at 963-64; Kimel, 528 U.S. at 83-89. Consequently, those cases offer limited guidance in the case at bench. Here, intervenor United States has defended the constitutionality of the FMLA on the ground that it is aimed at remedying and preventing gender discrimination, and gender discrimination is subject to heightened scrutiny. See, e.g., United States v. Virginia, 518 U.S. 515, 533 (1996) (holding that state-sponsored gender discrimination violates equal protection unless it serves important governmental objectives and . . . the discriminatory means employed are substantially related to the achievement of those objectives (internal quotation marks omitted)). 25 The post-Seminole Tribe case law from the circuit courts does little to clarify how the congruence and proportionality inquiry changes when the legislation is meant to remedy or prevent gender discrimination, rather than discrimination with respect to a non-suspect classification. A number of circuits have held that the Equal Pay Act (EPA) and Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 are valid section 5 legislation aimed at preventing gender discrimination, but the analysis in those cases is sparse and rests largely on the fact that the EPA and Title IX prohibit almost no conduct beyond what the Equal Protection Clause itself prohibits. See Varner v. Ill. State Univ., 226 F.3d 927 (7th Cir. 2000) (EPA); Kovacevich v. Kent State Univ., 224 F.3d 806 (6th Cir. 2000) (EPA); Hundertmark v. Fla. Dep't of Transp., 205 F.3d 1272 (11th Cir. 2000) (EPA); O'Sullivan v. Minnesota, 191 F.3d 965 (8th Cir. 1999) (EPA); Ussery v. Louisiana, 150 F.3d 431 (5th Cir. 1998) (EPA); Franks v. Ky. Sch. for the Deaf, 142 F.3d 360 (6th Cir. 1998) (Title IX); Crawford v. Davis , 109 F.3d 1281 (8th Cir. 1997) (Title IX). Those cases consequently do not explain how legislation that is meant to prevent gender discrimination, but that sweeps substantially more broadly than the Equal Protection Clause, should be analyzed under section 5. Only Kazmier, which held that the FMLA provision regarding leave to care for an ailing family member (i.e., §§ 2612(a)(1)(C)) is not valid section 5 legislation, provides a detailed analysis of the issue. See Kazmier, 225 F.3d at 524-27. 7 26
27 The first step in the congruence and proportionality inquiry is to identify with some precision the scope of the constitutional right at issue. Garrett, 121 S. Ct. at 963. The United States defends §§ 2612(a)(1)(C) on the ground that it is meant to remedy and prevent unconstitutional gender discrimination. 8 The argument is supported by the text of the FMLA. See 29 U.S.C. §§ 2601(a)(5) (Congress finds that . . . due to the nature of the roles of men and women in our society, the primary responsibility for family caretaking often falls on women, and such responsibility affects the working lives of women more than it affects the working lives of men . . . .); id. §§ 2601(b)(4) (It is the purpose of this Act . . . to accomplish [the Act's previously described purposes ] in a manner that, consistent with the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, minimizes the potential for employment discrimination on the basis of sex by ensuring generally that leave is available for eligible medical reasons (including maternity-related disability) and for compelling family reasons, on a gender-neutral basis . . . .). 28 The United States argues that because women are regarded as having the primary responsibility for family caretaking (both for infants and for sick family members), employers commonly offer less caretaking leave to men than to women. The United States further concludes that this kind of gender-discriminatory leave policy is harmful both to men -because they are not given enough leave to care for their families -and to women -because reduced leave for men forces women to spend more time taking care of their families, and women's consequently greater needs for caretaking leave make them less attractive job candidates than men. Additionally, as we explain later, it appears that in enacting the FMLA Congress was also striving, in light of a long history of unconstitutional legislation mandating stereotypical family roles, to remedy the gender-discriminatory impact of employer policies that provide no family leave at all. The statute aims to remedy all these forms of discrimination by setting a gender-neutral minimum standard for the granting of caretaking leave. Cf. Laro, 259 F.3d at 12 (noting that the argument in support of a valid Eleventh Amendment waiver is stronger with respect to the parental and family-care leave provisions than it is with respect to personal medical leave). 29 State-sponsored gender discrimination is subject tointermediate scrutiny under the Equal Protection Clause. Such discrimination is thus unconstitutional unless it is substantially related to the achievement of an important governmental interest. See, e.g., Wengler v. Druggists Mut. Ins. Co., 446 U.S. 142, 150 (1980) ([O]ur precedents require that genderbased discriminations must serve important governmental objectives and that the discriminatory means employed must be substantially related to the achievement of those objectives.). In addition, the burden is on the defender of such discrimination to prove that the standard has been met. See, e.g., Kirchberg v. Feenstra, 450 U.S. 455, 461 (1981) ([T]he burden remains on the party seeking to uphold a statute that expressly discriminates on the basis of sex to advance an exceedingly persuasive justification for the challenged classification. (internal quotation marks omitted)); Wengler, 446 U.S. at 151 (The burden . . . is on those defending the discrimination to make out the claimed justification . . . .). 30 This allocation of the burden of proof has the effect of creating a rebuttable presumption of unconstitutionality for statesponsored gender discrimination. This contrasts sharply with the treatment of age and disability classifications, which are subject to rational basis review. The burden is entirely on the challenger of state-sponsored age or disability discrimination to prove that the discrimination is not rationally related to any conceivable legitimate governmental interest. See Garrett, 121 S. Ct. at 964 ([T]he burden is upon the challenging party to negative any reasonably conceivable state of facts that could provide a rational basis for the classification. (internal quotation marks omitted)); Kimel, 528 U.S. at 84 ([T]he individual challenging [the discrimination] bears the burden of proving that the facts on which the classification is apparently based could not reasonably be conceived to be true by the governmental decisionmaker. (internal quotation marks omitted)). In this way, such classifications are presumptively constitutional. 31 Judicial application of heightened scrutiny to statesponsored gender discrimination is justified largely on the basis of the following analysis: (1) Gender differences are so seldom relevant to the achievement of any legitimate state interest that laws grounded in such considerations are deemed to reflect prejudice and antipathy, Kimel , 528 U.S. at 83 (internal quotation marks omitted) (contrasting race and gender with age); and (2) Individuals who suffer discrimination on the basis of gender have been subjected to a history of purposeful unequal treatment, id. (internal quotation marks omitted) (contrasting race and gender with age). 32
33 Section 2612(a)(1)(C) of the FMLA prohibits a broad range of state conduct that is not prohibited by the Equal Protection Clause's protection against invidious gender discrimination. Section 2612(a)(1)(C) does not merely prohibit gender discrimination in the states' granting of leave to their employees to care for ailing family members. Rather, it requires states to grant at least 12 weeks of such leave on a gender-neutral basis. If states granted only 11 or 10 weeks of such leave, or even none at all, and they did so in a gender-neutral manner, they presumably would not thereby be engaging in unconstitutional gender discrimination, without more, but would nonetheless violate §§ 2612(a)(1)(C). Thus, §§ 2612(a)(1)(C) sweeps more broadly than the Equal Protection Clause itself. 34 This fact does not, however, establish that §§ 2612(a)(1)(C) is not valid section 5 legislation. As the Supreme Court has explained, [d]ifficult and intractable problems often require powerful remedies, which may include reasonably prophylactic legislation. Kimel, 528 U.S. at 88. The question, then, is whether §§ 2612(a)(1)(C) is just such an appropriate remedy or, instead, merely an attempt to substantively redefine States' legal obligations under the Fourteenth Amendment. Id. 35 In answering this question, the Court in both Kimel and Garrett examined the relevant legislative histories to see if they contained evidence of the sort of difficult and intractable problems that would justify such broad remedies. See Garrett, 121 S. Ct. at 964-68; Kimel, 528 U.S. at 88-90. Moreover, the Court's opinion in Garrett could be taken to imply that adequate support in the legislative record is always a requirement for a valid exercise of Congress' section 5 power. See Garrett, 121 S. Ct. at 964 (Once we have determined the metes and bounds of the constitutional right in question, we examine whether Congress identified a history and pattern of unconstitutional employment discrimination by the States against the disabled.). Such a requirement, however, would be at odds with both Kimel and at least one other post-Seminole Tribe decision of the Court. See Kimel, 528 U.S. at 88 (describing the examination of legislative history as merely[o]ne means by which [the Court has] made such a determination in the past); Fla. Prepaid Post-secondary Educ. Expense Bd. v. Coll. Sav. Bank, 527 U.S. 627, 646 (1999) ([T]he lack of support in the legislative record is not determinative . . . .). In addition, for the courts to impose such a procedural requirement on Congress, in effect requiring that Congress gather and document sufficient evidence to support the exercise of its constitutionally granted powers, would raise fundamental separation of powers concerns -the courts would be treating Congress more like an administrative agency than like a co-equal branch of the federal government. Cf. A. Christopher Bryant & Timothy J. Simeone, Remanding to Congress: The Supreme Court's New On the Record  Constitutional Review of Federal Statutes, 86 Cornell L. Rev. 328, 373-83 (2001) (describing the constitutional difficulties with judicial imposition of such a procedural requirement on Congress). 36 For all of these reasons, we conclude that Garrett should not be taken to impose such a requirement, but rather should be interpreted as following Kimel's approach: Examination of legislative history is merely one means by which a court can determine whether the broad prophylactic legislation under consideration is justified by the existence of sufficiently difficult and intractable problems. See also Kilcullen v. N.Y. State Dep't of Labor, 205 F.3d 77, 80-81 (2d Cir. 2000), overruled on other grounds, 121 S. Ct. 955 (2001).The ultimate question remains not whether Congress created a sufficient legislative record, but rather whether, given all of the information before the Court, it appears that the statute in question can appropriately be characterized as legitimate remedial legislation. Id. at 81. 37 There is a further point about Kimel and Garrett's treatment of the appropriate remedy inquiry that informs our analysis here: In each case, after failing to find in the legislative record sufficient evidence of a history and pattern of unconstitutional conduct by the states, the Court determined that the challenged federal statutes were not valid section 5 legislation. In effect, this approach means that the relevant provisions of the ADA and the ADEA were subject to a presumption of unconstitutionality -the burden was on the defenders of the legislation to prove that it was valid under section 5. While the creation of such a presumption might appear extraordinary and incongruous, it makes sense in light of the Court's emphasis on the fact that state-sponsored age and disability discrimination is not subject to heightened scrutiny. The presumption of unconstitutionality applied to the ADA and the ADEA thus is merely the flip side of the presumption of constitutionality that is accorded to statesponsored age and disability discrimination. Because rationalbasis review makes unconstitutional age and disability discrimination exceedingly uncommon, Congress must bear the heavy burden of proving that such discrimination really does exist to an extent that justifies broad use of its section 5 power. 38 For all of these reasons, we are persuaded that the FMLA should be treated differently from both the ADA and the ADEA because the FMLA is aimed at remedying gender discrimination, which is subject to heightened scrutiny. Because state-sponsored gender discrimination is presumptively unconstitutional, section 5 legislation that is intended to remedy or prevent gender discrimination is presumptively constitutional. 9 That is, the burden is on the challenger of the legislation to prove that states have not engaged in a pattern of unconstitutional conduct. As the Supreme Court has acknowledged, the heightened scrutiny applied to state-sponsored gender discrimination reflects judicial recognition of the fact that persons who suffer discrimination on the basis of gender have been subjected to a history of purposeful unequal treatment. Kimel, 528 U.S. at 83. Thus, the Court has long recognized just the kind of history of invidious gender discrimination by states that it was unable to find, in Kimel and Garrett, with respect to age and disability. It therefore makes sense to put the burden of proof on the challenger of a statute like the FMLA, to prove the absence of the sort of gender discrimination that the Court has found to be longstanding and widespread. 39 Consequently, we conclude that Congress has validly exercised its section 5 power by giving private individuals the right to sue states for violations of §§ 2612(a)(1)(C). Defendants have failed to show that there is not a widespread pattern of gender discrimination by states regarding the granting of leave to employees to care for sick family members or a historical record of state enforcement of stereotypical family roles. 40 We recognize that, in Kazmier, the Fifth Circuit held to the contrary, that Congress did not validly exercise its section 5 power in enacting §§ 2612(a)(1)(C). Kazmier , 225 F.3d at 526-27. The court's analysis closely tracks the analysis in Kimel. In particular, the only place at which the court took the difference between age discrimination and gender discrimination into account was in determining the scope of the constitutional right whose violation the statute was meant to prevent. See id. at 525-26. Consequently, the court held the legislative history to the same exacting standard that was applied in Kimel (and subsequently in Garrett): The legislative history must contain evidence of actual constitutional violations by the States sufficient to justify the full scope of the statute's provisions. Id. at 524 (footnote omitted); see also id. (Legislation that abrogates immunity must be proportional with and congruent to an identified pattern of actual constitutional violations by the States. (footnote omitted)). 41 We find Kazmier's analysis unpersuasive and we decline to follow it, for the reasons we have given. In particular, (1) it assumes that adequate evidentiary support in the legislative history is always a requirement for a valid exercise of the section 5 power, and (2) it fails to acknowledge the ways in which the heightened scrutiny to which state-sponsored gender discrimination is subject justifies shifting or modifying the burden of proof in the legislative history inquiry. 10 42
43 Alternatively, we also hold that the legislative history of the FMLA contains substantial evidence of gender discrimination with respect to the granting of leave to state employees, and that it therefore justifies the enactment of the FMLA as a prophylactic measure. 44 The FMLA's legislative history reflects that a 1990 Bureau of Labor Statistics (the BLS) survey found that 37 percent of surveyed private-sector employees were covered bymaternity leave policies, while only 18 percent were covered by paternity leave policies. S. Rep. No. 103-3, at 14-15, reprinted in 1993 U.S.C.C.A.N. 3, 17. The numbers from a similar BLS survey the previous year were 33 percent and 16 percent, respectively. Id. Thus, while these data show that a larger percentage of employees were covered in 1990 than in 1989, they also show a widening of the gender gap in leave policy during the same period. In addition, while the BLS surveyed only private employers, an extensive study of the private and public sectors done by the Yale Bush Center Infant Care Leave Project revealed that [t]he proportion and construction of leave policies available to public sector employees differs little from those offered private sector employees. The Parental and Medical Leave Act of 1986: Joint Hearing Before the Subcommittee on Labor-Management Relations and the Subcommittee on Labor Standards of the Committee on Education and Labor, 99th Cong. 33 (1986) (prepared statement of Meryl Frank, Director of the Yale Bush Center Infant Care Leave Project); see also id. at 29-30 (We did a survey of the public sector, a survey of Federal employees, all 50 States, and of the military. We have studied small businesses, mid-size businesses and large businesses to find out what they are offering. . . . We found that public sector leaves don't vary very much from private sector leaves.) (testimony of Meryl Frank, Director of the Yale Bush Center Infant Care Leave Project). 45 Taken together, the BLS and Yale Bush Center surveys constitute substantial evidence of unconstitutional state-sponsored gender discrimination in leave policies for state employees. The studies show significant gender-based disparities in the coverage of state leave policies . They thus indicate widespread intentional gender discrimination by states. Moreover, the studies show that this discrimination has persisted despite the existence of 42 U.S.C. §§ 1983 and Title VII, long after the 1978 enactment of the Pregnancy Discrimination Act made discrimination on the basis of pregnancy an actionable form of gender discrimination under Title VII. Altogether then, the studies show that states' discriminatory leave policies are just the sort of difficult and intractable problem that justifies broad prophylactic measures in response. 46 We recognize that a weakness in this evidence as applied to Hibbs' case is that the BLS and Yale Bush Center studies deal only with parental leave, not with leave to care for a sick family member. They thus do not document a widespread pattern of precisely the kind of discrimination that §§ 2612(a)(1)(C) is intended to prevent. But the studies do nonetheless constitute strong circumstantial evidence of statesponsored gender discrimination in the granting of leave to care for a sick family member, because if states discriminate along gender lines regarding the one kind of leave, then they are likely to do so regarding the other. 47 Here again, the fact that the FMLA is aimed at remedying gender discrimination, rather than discrimination with respect to a non-suspect classification, informs our analysis. Because the heightened scrutiny applied to state-sponsored gender discrimination reflects judicial recognition of the fact that persons who suffer discrimination on the basis of gender have been subjected to a history of purposeful unequal treatment, Kimel, 528 U.S. at 83, we conclude that courts have more latitude in drawing inferences from the legislative history of a federal statute aimed at remedying state-sponsored gender discrimination than in drawing inferences from the histories of statutes like the ADA and the ADEA, which aim to remedy discrimination with respect to non-suspect classifications. For this reason, we conclude that the evidence in the FMLA's legislative history is sufficient to justify Congress' broad use of its section 5 power in enacting §§ 2612(a)(1)(C). On this basis as well, then, we hold that Congress validly exercised its section 5 power when it gave state employees the right to sue their employers for violations of §§ 2612(a)(1)(C). 11 48
49 There is one more basis for concluding that the FMLA fits within Congress' Fourteenth Amendment authority: In providing for minimum levels of leave for employees to care for family members, Congress was acting against a background of state-imposed systemic barriers to women's equality in the workplace that, under recent constitutional doctrine, were undoubtedly unconstitutional. The FMLA can be understood as, in part, an appropriately limited scheme designed to undo the impact of that history of state-supported and mandated sex discrimination as it continues to affect private and public employment. 50 The modern trend noted above to provide more generous family care leave to women is related to that historical background: That trend reflects the flip side of the stereotypical assumption that women are marginal workers whose fundamental responsibilities are in the home. At the same time, the framers of the FMLA were at least equally concerned with the failure of many employers to provide family care leave to anyone, with the result -given the history of state-supported treatment of women as nonessential workers, with principal responsibility for the family -that women most often were the ones who left their jobs to care for family members. While the failure to provide any such leave is not itself unconstitutional, Congress was acting not in a vacuum but against the background of unconstitutional state laws concerning the role of women in the workplace. Congress therefore appropriately enacted the FMLA under the Fourteenth Amendment as, in part, a congruent and proportional remedy for the continuing effects of past unconstitutional gender discrimination in employment by the states, readjusting workplace norms in both private and public workplaces so as to foster equal participation in both economic and domestic life by both men and women. 51
52 There can be no doubt that our Nation has had a long and unfortunate history of sex discrimination. Frontiero v. Richardson, 411 U.S. 677, 684 (1973) (plurality opinion) (quoted in Virginia, 518 U.S. at 531); see also Kimel, 528 U.S. at 83 (recognizing a history of purposeful unequal treatment on the basis of gender). That history underlies the modern jurisprudence recounted above, requiring [p]arties who seek to defend gender-based government action [to] demonstrate an `exceedingly persuasive justification' for that action. Virginia, 518 U.S. at 531. Because [t]oday's skeptical scrutiny of official action denying rights or opportunities based on sex responds to volumes of history[,] id. , some detailed consideration of relevant aspects of that history is useful in evaluating the appropriate role of Congress when acting under section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment to end sex discrimination. 53 In the employment context, from the beginning of our Nation's history until at least the 1970's, state laws supported a regime in which men and women were assigned, respectively, roles as workers and homemakers. State labor legislation, in the guise of protecting women, played a major role in limiting women's access to the workplace -and concomitantly, in discouraging the involvement of men in domestic duties, including caring for children and relatives. 54 Before 1969, every state had some form of labor legislation protective of women only. 12 Judith A. Baer, The Chains of Protection: The Judicial Response to Women's Labor Legislation 4 (1978) (hereinafter Chains of Protection). By 1917, thirty-eight states had laws limiting in some way the hours that women -but not men -could work for wages. Barbara Allen Babcock et al., Sex Discrimination and the Law: Causes and Remedies 247 (1975) (hereinafterCauses and Remedies); see also Muller v. Oregon , 208 U.S. 412, 419 n.1 (1908) (listing -and approving -laws from 19 states limiting the hours that women could work). And, as is true of the other sex discriminatory laws discussed below, hours laws remained on the books well into the second half of the 20th century. See, e.g., Corning Glass Works v. Brennan, 417 U.S. 188, 193 n.7 (1974) (Pennsylvania and New York laws not repealed until 1969, and had continuing impact thereafter on women's wages); Rosenfeld v. So. Pac. Co., 293 F. Supp. 1219 (C.D. Cal. 1968). 55 Hours laws took two forms: A majority of states enacted laws setting a maximum number of hours that women could work in certain industries, without so legislating for men. People v. Elerding, 98 N.E. 982, 985 (Ill. 1912) (stating that by 1912, twenty-seven states had adopted such laws). 13 Maximum hours laws barred women from earning overtime and hindered women's employment opportunities by excluding them from jobs requiring overtime. Wendy W. Williams, The Equality Crisis: Some Reflections on Culture, Courts, and Feminism, 14 Women's Rts. L. Rep. 151, 170 n.114 (1992) (hereinafter Equality Crisis). 56 Other state laws prohibited the employment of women--but, again, not men -during night hours. People v. Charles Schweinler Press, 214 N.Y. 395, 404 (N.Y. 1915) (affirming a law prohibiting women from working in factories at night, and noting that by 1913 nine other states had passed such laws). 14 Night hour laws precluded women not only from working night shift jobs but also from obtaining more desirable day shift jobs that required employees initially to work night hours. Equality Crisis at 170 n.114. 57 States legislatures also limited women's employment opportunities by placing a restriction on the amount of weight that women (but not men) could lift on the job, 15 and by prohibiting women (but again, not men) from cleaning moving machinery, Chains of Protection at 31 (fourteen machinery laws by 1908). Likewise, state laws requiring that women receive lunch breaks or rest periods made women less desirable employees than men. 16 58 Between 1912 and 1923, fifteen states passed minimum wage laws for women only. Causes and Remedies 247. 17 As the Supreme Court recognized, prescribing of minimum wages for women alone . . . restrain[ed] them in competition with men and tend[ed] arbitrarily to deprive them of employment and a fair chance to find work. New York ex rel. Tipaldo, 298 U.S. at 617. 18 59 State laws also barred women from certain occupations, either by outright prohibitions or by refusing to grant women necessary licenses. The occupations from which some states excluded women completely included the practice of law, 19 working as a bartender or in an establishment selling liquor, 20 mining, 21 and wrestling. 22 60 In addition, state laws providing that widows, but not widowers, automatically received workers' compensation or similar benefits at the death of a working spouse 23 discriminated against women workers because of the offensive assumption . . . that male workers' earnings are vital to the support of their families, while the earnings of female wage earners do not significantly contribute to their families' support. Wengler, 446 U.S. at 142 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). 24 61 In upholding the discriminatory laws described above, state courts made clear that the basis, and validity, of such laws lay in stereotypical beliefs about the appropriate roles of men and women. 25 For instance, in upholding an hours law, the Supreme Court of Illinois relied upon the need for women to conserve their energy for the proper discharge of the maternal functions and the maintenance of the home. Elerding, 98 N.E. at 985. The Supreme Court of Nebraska found similar legislation valid because of its concern that if women worked longer hours in the workplace they would be incapable of bearing their share of the burdens of the family and the home. Wenham, 91 N.W. at 425 (quoted in Muller, 85 P. at 857). Likewise, the Court of Appeals of New York noted that night work interfered with the peculiar functions which have been imposed upon [women] by nature. Charles Schweinler Press, 214 N.Y. at 400-03, 405-06. The legislature was justified in enacting the night hours law not only for women's sake, said the New York court, but, as is and ought to be constantly and legitimately emphasized, for the sake of the children whom a great majority of them will be called on to bear. Id. 26 62 Such judgments have attended, and impeded, women's progress toward full citizenship stature throughout our Nation's history. Virginia, 518 U.S. at 542. Although the FMLA's legislative history does not specifically recount this background, as we hold above, when our nation's judicial history already documents unconstitutional discrimination against the class at issue, there is no need for Congress, separately and redundantly, to provide detailed findings of such discrimination in order to exercise its Fourteenth Amendment powers. See Garrett, 531 U.S. at 375-76 (Kennedy, J., concurring) (If the States had been transgressing the Fourteenth Amendment by their mistreatment or lack of concern for those with impairments, one would have expected to find in decisions of the courts of the States and also the courts of the United States extensive litigation and discussion of the constitutional violations.). 27 63
64 As late as 1961, the Supreme Court upheld a gender classification because woman is still regarded as the center of home and family life. Hoyt v. Florida, 368 U.S. 57, 62 (1961). Only in 1971 did the Court find for the first time that a state law violated the Equal Protection Clause because it arbitrarily discriminated on the basis of sex. See Reed v. Reed, 404 U.S. 71 (1971). By this time, Congress had already enacted the Equal Pay Act of 1963 and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to prohibit gender discrimination in the workplace. 29 U.S.C. §§ 206(d); 42 U.S.C. §§ 2000e, et seq. In 1978, Congress amended Title VII to include the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, which barred discrimination on the basis of pregnancy. 42 U.S.C. §§ 2000e(k). 65 As we have seen, the Court soon settled on a heightened standard of review for state-imposed gender classifications, requiring an exceedingly persuasive justification that is substantially related to important governmental objectives to validate classifications. Virginia , 518 U.S. at 533 (citing Miss. Univ. for Women, 458 U.S. at 724, and Wengler, 446 U.S. at 150); see also Kirchberg v. Feenstra , 450 U.S. 455, 461 (1981). Under heightened scrutiny, [s]tate actors controlling gates to opportunity . . . may not exclude qualified individuals based on `fixed notions concerning the roles and abilities of males and females.'  Virginia, 518 U.S. at 541 (quoting Miss. Univ. for Women, 458 U.S. at 725); see also id. at 532, 116 S. Ct. 2264 (the Constitution mandates for all citizens, regardless of gender, an equal opportunity to aspire, achieve, participate in and contribute to society based on their individual talents and capacities.). 66 Heightened constitutional scrutiny and federal laws prohibiting gender discrimination in the workplace could not, however, erase the volumes of history of sex discrimination in this country. Id. at 531, 116 S. Ct. 2264. State support for stereotypical gender roles had allowed American employers -including the states -to develop and function without accommodating workers' home responsibilities during emergencies. Because women filled the caretaking role during times of crisis, men were expected to continue their work without interruption from domestic responsibilities. And, even as women entered the workplace in greater numbers, the continuing expectation that women would assume responsibility for domestic concerns put a burden on both working women and working men, hindering women's ability to compete equally in the marketplace while making it difficult for men and women to recast family responsibilities by sharing critical responsibilities at home. 67 Before enacting the FMLA, Congress heard testimony that 68 our social structures, and most particularly our employment policies, continue to operate as if women's role is to stay home and care for the family and men's role is to work outside the home for a pay check. . . . [W]e have not accommodated our institutions to the simple reality that men and women no longer operate in separate spheres, but rather that all employees, male and female, have family as well as employment responsibilities. Such accommodation is necessary if workers, and especially women workers, are to be able to exercise their right to equal employment and at the same time to preserve their family lives. 69 The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1987: Joint Hearings Before the Subcomm. on Labor-Management Relations and the Subcomm. on Labor Standards of the Comm. on Education and Labor, 100th Cong. (1987) (statement of Donna Lenhoff, Associate Director, Women's Legal Defense Fund). The FMLA preamble and legislative history quite explicitly reflect this same understanding of the historical dynamic, and an intent to change it: Congress specifically found that due to the nature of the roles of men and women in our society, the primary responsibility for family caretaking often falls on women, and such responsibility affects the working lives of women more than it affects the working lives of men. §§ 2601(a)(5); see also H.R. Rep. No. 103-8(I), at 16-17 (1993) (The typical worker is no longer a man supporting a wife who stays at home, with the woman caring for the children and tending to other family needs . . . . Yet our workplaces are still too often modeled on the unrealistic and outmoded idea of workers unencumbered by family responsibilities.); S. Rep. No. 102-68, at 37 (1991) (In the absence of a family leave standard, childbirth and the need to care for a sick child or parent have an adverse impact on women's earnings.). 28 70 The FMLA's legislative history documents statistically the harmful and extant effects of stereotypical gender roles on women's participation in the workplace immediately prior to the Act's enactment. The evidence revealed that women still bore the brunt of domestic responsibilities in American society, and that this burden hindered women's participation in the paid workforce. 71 Specifically, Congress found that [t]wo-thirds of the non-professional caregivers for older, chronically ill, or disabled persons are working women, the most common caregiver being a child or spouse. H.R. Rep. No. 103-8(I), at 24 (1993); S. Rep. No. 103-3, at 7. The cost of elder care is estimated at $4.8 billion annually in lost income (mostly to women) . . . . S. Rep. No. 102-68, at 28 (1991) (emphasis added). (1993). A 1990 study concluded that`caring for elderly parents forces large numbers of women in the labor force to cut their hours, take time off without pay, and rearrange job schedules.' Indeed the study estimated that 11 to 13% of women caring for elderly parents actually quit their jobs to provide care. H.R. Rep. No. 102-135(I), at 20 (1991) (emphasis added). 72 Further, the record before Congress indicated that most state employers had not developed family leave policies concomitant with those provided for in the FMLA. H.R. Rep. No. 103-8(I), at 78-83 (1993) (Minority Views Attachment B (information provided by Dep't of Labor)). When the FMLA was enacted, many states had enacted no family or medical leave law applicable to state or private sector employees, and many more had either no provisions regarding family care leave for state employees or provided family leave care for state employees so limited that, as a practical matter, employees lacked job security if a relative needed care for a prolonged illness. Id. Congress also recognized that if a government employer does not follow a uniform leave policy, discretionary treatment can lead to unequal treatment of employees (especially, for instance, in the granting of parental leave), H.R. Rep. 103-8(II), at 10-11 (1993), perpetuating stereotypical gender roles. 73
The FMLA preamble declares: 74 It is the purpose of this Act - 75 . . . . . 76 (4) to[,] . . . consistent with the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, minimize[ ] the potential for employment discrimination on the basis of sex by ensuring that leave is available for eligible medical reasons (including maternity-related disability) and for compelling family reasons, on a gender-neutral basis; and 77 (5) to promote the goal of equal employment opportunity for women and men, pursuant to [the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment]. 78 § 2601(b). 79 Section 2612(a)(1)(C) of the FMLA, providing for unpaid leave to care for an immediate family member of the employee, serves Congress' general goal of equal employment opportunity for women and men in several ways: 80 First, emergencies do arise that require the care of a family member. By providing for a period of job-protected unpaid leave, the FMLA allows women to participate in the public sphere despite the occasional and temporary, but pressing, needs of family members -and despite the inherited assumption of many employers, derived in part from a history of state-sponsored stereotypical gender roles, that workers have another (female) family member to handle emergencies at home. 81 Second, by allowing both male and female employees reasonable emergency family leave, the FMLA permits families to choose which parent or sibling will attend to extraordinary family responsibilities in light of the family's preferences, needs, career concerns, and economic considerations.  H.R. Rep. No. 103-8(I), at 36 (1993). Under federal policy, then, domestic duties no longer belong to women only, but can be assumed by any adult family member. By allowing either women or men to take responsibility for pressing domestic concerns, according to the family's preferences, the FMLA provides women the opportunity to participate fully in the marketplace. This flexibility offers women (and men) the opportunity to overcome the stereotypical gender roles fostered and perpetuated by the states. 82 Third, as already discussed, by providing for family-care leave on a gender neutral basis, Congress also counteracted any tendency by employers either to refuse to hire women because of their presumed higher need for family-care leave, or to afford such leave to women but not to men, thus reinforcing gender roles. Laro, 259 F.3d at 12; 29 see H.R. Rep. No. 103-8(I), at 29 (1993) (A law providing special protection to women . . . in addition to being inequitable, runs the risk of causing discriminatory treatment. [This legislation], by addressing the needs of all workers, avoids such a risk.) 83 Additionally, the heightened scrutiny of gender-based classifications would almost surely have precluded leaveprotection that was not gender neutral. Cf. Wiesenfeld, 420 U.S. at 643, 645; Virginia, 518 U.S. at 533. It is for this reason, presumably, that Congress in the preamble to the FMLA specified the need to accomplish the purposes of the Act in a manner . . . consistent with the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. §§ 2601(b)(4). 84
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.