Violence Against the Constitution
EDITORIAL, NYTimes on the Web, May 16, 2000
With its 5-to-4 ruling yesterday overturning part of the Violence Against
Women Act, the Supreme Court left women more vulnerable to gender-motivated
violence. It also provided confirmation that a narrow majority on the court is
determined to reconfigure the balance between state and federal authority, even
at the expense of weakening civil rights. The effect of this decision is to
undermine Congress's traditional power to identify problems that states cannot
or will not adequately deal with and to fashion national remedies.
The case involved a Virginia college student who claimed she was raped by two
football players. She brought suit against her assailants in federal court,
using the civil remedy provision of the 1994 act. Congress fashioned this remedy
to provide an alternative avenue of redress for victims of rape and other crimes
"motivated by gender" -- recognizing the devastating impact such
violence has on women's lives. Congress also recognized that historically, state
justice systems have suffered from what it identified as gender bias and have
not given such crimes the attention they deserve.
The majority opinion -- written by Chief Justice William Rehnquist, and joined
by Justices Sandra Day O'Connor, Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy and Clarence
Thomas -- said that Congress had overstepped its authority to regulate
interstate commerce and enforce the equal protection guarantee of the 14th
Amendment, and failed to distinguish between "what is truly national and
what is truly local" as the Constitution requires.
In so ruling, the court was unpersuaded by the extensive evidence that Congress
had compiled to justify its use of the interstate commerce clause. The evidence
demonstrated that violence extracted a heavy toll on the economy by hurting the
productivity and mobility of female students and employees. In addition, the
majority seemed oblivious to the fact that 36 states signed amicus briefs
endorsing the act and Congress's power to enact it.
At the end of the compelling dissent he filed along with Justices Ruth Bader
Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and John Paul Stevens, Justice David Souter likened the
court's new states' rights jurisprudence to its decisions in the 1930's
rejecting elements of the New Deal. He predicted that the majority's cramped
view of federalism would not prove to be "enduring law," and for the
sake of civil rights, it can only be hoped that he is right. |
