In United States v. Morrison, decided May 15, 2000, the Supreme Court struck down the civil remedy provision of the Violence Against Women Act by a 5-4 vote, holding that Congress had no constitutional authority to let victims of gender-motivated violence sue their attackers in federal court.1Supreme Court of the United States. United States v. Morrison – Syllabus Neither the Commerce Clause nor Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Court ruled, reached that far. The decision remains one of the defining federalism cases of the modern era, and it still governs how far Congress can go in regulating noneconomic conduct.
How the Case Reached the Supreme Court
The lawsuit grew out of a 1994 incident at Virginia Tech. Christy Brzonkala, a student, alleged that two members of the university’s football team, Antonio Morrison and James Crawford, sexually assaulted her. The university’s internal discipline was reduced or overturned, and local prosecutors declined to bring criminal charges.
Brzonkala then sued in federal court under 42 U.S.C. ยง 13981, the civil remedy provision Congress had just enacted as part of the Violence Against Women Act. That provision let a victim of gender-motivated violence recover compensatory damages, punitive damages, and injunctive relief in federal court, so long as the violence was committed “because of gender or on the basis of gender, and due, at least in part, to an animus based on the victim’s gender.”2Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 42 USC 13981 – Civil Rights Random violence unconnected to gender did not qualify. The Fourth Circuit held the provision unconstitutional, and the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case.
The Commerce Clause Holding
The federal government defended the statute first under the Commerce Clause, arguing that gender-motivated violence, taken in the aggregate, substantially affects interstate commerce by reducing workforce participation, driving up healthcare costs, and discouraging travel. Congressional hearings had produced years of testimony and data to that effect.
Chief Justice William Rehnquist, writing for a majority that included Justices O’Connor, Scalia, Kennedy, and Thomas, rejected the argument. Gender-motivated violence, the Court held, is “not, in any sense, economic activity,” and Congress cannot regulate noneconomic, violent criminal conduct based solely on its aggregate effect on interstate commerce. Accepting the government’s theory, the majority warned, would leave no meaningful limit on federal power: if the aggregate economic effects of violent crime justified federal regulation, the same logic would reach murder, assault, family law, education, and every other area traditionally left to the states. The Constitution, the majority wrote, “requires a distinction between what is truly national and what is truly local,” and suppressing violent crime has always been the “prime object of the States’ police power.”3Justia. United States v. Morrison, 529 US 598 (2000)
The Fourteenth Amendment Holding
The government’s backup argument invoked Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment, which gives Congress power to enforce the Amendment’s equal protection guarantee. The theory was that states had systematically failed to protect women from gender-motivated violence, so Congress could correct that failure by giving victims a federal remedy.
This ran into the state action doctrine. The Fourteenth Amendment restricts government action, not private conduct. As the Court put it in the Civil Rights Cases of 1883, “individual invasion of individual rights is not the subject-matter of the amendment.”4Legal Information Institute. State Action Doctrine, US Constitution Annotated Section 13981 targeted private attackers rather than state officials, and no consequences flowed to any state actor under the statute. Even assuming Virginia officials had handled Brzonkala’s case with gender-based bias, the majority found that a federal cause of action against her alleged assailants could not be squared with the state action requirement.1Supreme Court of the United States. United States v. Morrison – Syllabus
The Court acknowledged the underlying facts plainly: “no civilized system of justice could fail to provide her a remedy.” But under the federal system, that remedy had to come from Virginia, not the United States.3Justia. United States v. Morrison, 529 US 598 (2000)
The Dissent
Justice Souter, joined by Justices Stevens, Ginsburg, and Breyer, argued the majority had disregarded a substantial congressional record. That record documented that violent crime against women cost at least $3 billion per year, with broader estimates ranging from $5 to $10 billion when healthcare, criminal justice, and other social costs were counted. Almost half of rape victims lost their jobs or were forced to quit, and an estimated four million women were battered each year by partners.5Cornell Law Institute. United States v. Morrison – Dissenting Opinion
Souter’s position was that when Congress documents a substantial link between an activity and interstate commerce, the Court’s job is to review whether the conclusion is rational, not whether the Justices agree with it. He called the majority’s line between economic and noneconomic activity “unsupportable in theory” and “unworkable in practice.”5Cornell Law Institute. United States v. Morrison – Dissenting Opinion Justice Breyer wrote separately to make a related point: in an interconnected modern economy, a bright line between commercial and noncommercial activity is artificial.
How Morrison Fits With Lopez and Later Cases
Morrison is the second chapter of a story that began with United States v. Lopez. In 1995, the Court struck down the Gun-Free School Zones Act, the first federal statute invalidated on Commerce Clause grounds in nearly sixty years. Lopez set out three categories of activity Congress can reach under the Commerce Clause: the channels of interstate commerce, the persons and things moving in interstate commerce, and activities with a substantial relation to interstate commerce. Most fights happen in the third category.
Morrison applied that framework and reached the same result. Like carrying a gun near a school, committing an act of gender-motivated violence is not economic activity, and neither case would let Congress reach it through an attenuated chain back to the national economy. Five years later, in Gonzales v. Raich, the Court distinguished both cases and upheld federal regulation of homegrown marijuana because it was part of a broader regulatory scheme governing an economic market.6Congress.gov. Amdt10.4.4 Commerce Clause and Tenth Amendment The line Morrison drew, that noneconomic conduct cannot be aggregated into federal jurisdiction, has shaped every major Commerce Clause challenge since, including the 2012 litigation over the Affordable Care Act.
What Morrison Did and Did Not Do to VAWA
The Court invalidated one provision, not the statute. The rest of the Violence Against Women Act, including federal grant programs for domestic violence shelters, law enforcement training, and victim services, was untouched. Congress has reauthorized VAWA several times since, most recently in 2022, and none of those reauthorizations has attempted to restore the federal civil remedy for gender-motivated violence.7Congress.gov. The 2022 Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) Reauthorization
For victims, the practical effect of Morrison was that the federal civil cause of action disappeared. What remained were state-level options: state tort suits for assault and battery, state criminal prosecution when prosecutors chose to bring charges, and, on campuses, Title IX complaints. The majority was explicit that it was not denying a remedy but insisting that the remedy come from state governments rather than the federal one.