We the People, distrustful of power, and believing that government limited and dispersed protects freedom best, provided that our federal government would be one of enumerated powers, and that all power unenumerated would be reserved to the several States and to ourselves. Thus, though the authority conferred upon the federal government be broad, it is an authority constrained by no less a power than that of the People themselves. "[T]hat these limits may not be mistaken, or forgotten, the constitution is written." Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137, 176, 2 L.Ed. 60 (1803). These simple truths of power bestowed and power withheld under the Constitution have never been more relevant than in this day, when accretion, if not actual accession, of power to the federal government seems not only unavoidable, but even expedient.

These foundational principles of our constitutional government dictate resolution of the matter before us. For we address here a congressional statute, Subtitle C of the Violence Against Women Act, 42 U.S.C. § 13981, that federally punishes noncommercial intrastate violence, but is defended under Congress' power "[t]o regulate commerce ... among the several States," U.S. Const. art. I, § 8, cl. 3, and that punishes private conduct, but is defended under Congress' power "to enforce, by appropriate legislation" the Fourteenth Amendment guarantee that "[n]o State shall ... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws," U.S. Const. amend. XIV, §§ 1, 5. Such a statute, we are constrained to conclude, simply cannot be reconciled with the principles of limited federal government upon which this Nation is founded. As even the United States and appellant Brzonkala appear resignedly to recognize, the Supreme Court's recent decisions in United States v. Lopez, 514 U.S. 549, 115 S.Ct. 1624, 131 L.Ed.2d 626 (1995), and City of Boerne v. Flores, 521 U.S. 507, 117 S.Ct. 2157, 138 L.Ed.2d 624 (1997), which forcefully reaffirmed these most basic of constitutional principles, all but preordained as much. Enacted by the Congress assertedly in exercise of its powers both to regulate interstate commerce and to enforce the prohibitions of the Fourteenth Amendment, section 13981 was initially defended by appellants in the wake of United States v. Lopez primarily as a valid exercise, not of Congress' Commerce Clause power, but of Congress' power under Section 5 to enforce the Fourteenth Amendment's restrictions on the States--notwithstanding the statute's regulation of conduct purely private. Confronted by the Supreme Court's intervening decision in City of Boerne v. Flores during this appeal, the appellants retreated to defend the statute primarily as an exercise, not of Congress' power under Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment, but of its power under the Commerce Clause--notwithstanding the statute's regulation of conduct neither commercial nor interstate. And, finally, in the end, appellants are forced by these two plainly controlling decisions to defend the statute on little more than wistful assertions that United States v. Lopez is an aberration of no significance and that the established precedents upon which City of Boerne v. Flores rested--United States v. Harris, 106 U.S. 629, 1 S.Ct. 601, 27 L.Ed. 290 (1883), and the Civil Rights Cases, 109 U.S. 3, 3 S.Ct. 18, 27 L.Ed. 835 (1883)--should be disregarded as insufficiently "modern" to define any longer the reach of Congress' power under the Fourteenth Amendment.

Appreciating the precariousness in which appellants find themselves by virtue of the intervening decisions in Lopez and City of Boerne, but accepting these recent and binding authorities as the considered judgments of a Supreme Court that has incrementally, but jealously, enforced the structural limits on congressional power that inhere in Our Federalism, see Printz v. United States, 521 U.S. 98, 117 S.Ct. 2365, 2376-78, 138 L.Ed.2d 914 (1997); City of Boerne v. Flores, 521 U.S. 507, 117 S.Ct. 2157, 2162, 2168, 2172, 138 L.Ed.2d 624 (1997); Seminole Tribe v. Florida, 517 U.S. 44, 64-65, 116 S.Ct. 1114, 134 L.Ed.2d 252 (1996); United States v. Lopez, 514 U.S. 549, 552-53, 556-57, 567-68, 115 S.Ct. 1624, 131 L.Ed.2d 626 (1995); New York v. United States, 505 U.S. 144, 155-57, 112 S.Ct. 2408, 120 L.Ed.2d 120 (1992), we hold today that section 13981 exceeds Congress' power under both the Commerce Clause of Article I, Section 8, and the Enforcement Clause of Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment.

To otherwise hold would require not only that we, as the dissent would do, disclaim all responsibility to "determine whether the Congress has exceeded limits allowable in reason for the judgment which it has exercised," Polish Nat'l Alliance v. NLRB, 322 U.S. 643, 650, 64 S.Ct. 1196, 88 L.Ed. 1509 (1944), and embrace the view of federalism articulated by Justice Blackmun over passionate denouncements by the Chief Justice and Justice O'Connor in Garcia v. San Antonio Metropolitan Transit Authority, 469 U.S. 528, 105 S.Ct. 1005, 83 L.Ed.2d 1016 (1985), but that we extend the reach of Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment beyond a point ever contemplated by the Supreme Court since that Amendment's ratification over a century and a quarter ago. These things we simply cannot do.

In response to the problems of domestic violence, sexual assault, and other forms of violent crime against women, Congress enacted the Violence Against Women Act of 1994 ("VAWA"), Pub. L. No.103-322, §§ 40001-40703, 108 Stat. 1796, 1902-55. This legislation represents a multifaceted federal response to the problem of violence against women and includes a host of provisions, only one of which we address today.

VAWA's provisions are too numerous to discuss exhaustively here. Among its many provisions not at issue, VAWA provides extensive federal funding--initially $1.6 billion, but subject to subsequent enhancement--to the States to help them curtail violence against women through law enforcement efforts, 42 U.S.C. § 3796gg, education and prevention programs, id. § 300w-10, and the maintenance of battered women's shelters, id. § 10402(a); it criminalizes interstate acts of domestic violence, 18 U.S.C. § 2261, as well as the interstate violation of protective orders against violence and harassment, id. § 2262; it imposes various sentencing enhancements for existing federal crimes motivated by gender animus, 28 U.S.C. § 994, restitution to the victims of violent crime against women, 18 U.S.C. §§ 2248, 2259, 2264, and other remedial provisions governing those who commit violent crimes against women, see, e.g., id. § 2247 (repeat offenders); id. § 2263 (pretrial release of defendants); it amends the Federal Rules of Evidence by adopting a rape shield provision to exclude from sexual assault trials evidence of a victim's prior sexual behavior, 28 U.S.C. § 2074; Fed.R.Evid. 412; and it mandates that all States give Full Faith and Credit to the protective orders of every other State, 18 U.S.C. § 2265.

In addition to these provisions, however, VAWA establishes, in the single section at issue before us today, a federal substantive right in "[a]ll persons within the United States ... to be free from crimes of violence motivated by gender." 42 U.S.C. § 13981(b). See infra Part II. And, to enforce this substantive right, section 13981(c) creates a private cause of action against any "person ... who commits a crime of violence motivated by gender," 42 U.S.C. § 13981(c), and allows any party injured by such a crime to obtain compensatory damages, punitive damages, and injunctive, declaratory, or other appropriate relief, id.

Plaintiff-appellant Christy Brzonkala brought the instant action under section 13981 in federal district court against defendants-appellees Antonio Morrison and James Crawford. As is relevant here, she alleged as follows.1 Brzonkala was a student at Virginia Polytechnic Institute at the time of the incident at issue. Morrison and Crawford were students at Virginia Polytechnic Institute at the same time and were members of the school's football team. Brzonkala alleges that soon after she met Morrison and Crawford, the two defendants pinned her down on a bed in her dormitory and forcibly raped her. J.A. at 71-72. Afterwards, Morrison told Brzonkala, "You better not have any f* * *ing diseases." Id. at 72. And, subsequently, Morrison announced publicly in the dormitory's dining hall, "I like to get girls drunk and f* * * the s* * * out of them." Id. at 73. In her complaint, Brzonkala alleges, inter alia, that these acts by Morrison and Crawford violated her right under 42 U.S.C. § 13981(b) to be free from gender-motivated crimes of violence.2

Morrison and Crawford moved to dismiss Brzonkala's claim on the grounds that the complaint failed to state a claim under section 13981 and that, even if the complaint did state such a claim, Congress was without constitutional authority to enact section 13981. The United States intervened to defend the constitutionality of section 13981 under the Commerce Clause and Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment--the two sources of power expressly invoked by Congress in enacting section 13981. See 42 U.S.C. § 13981(a) (declaring statute adopted "[p]ursuant to the affirmative power of Congress to enact this part under section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, as well as under section 8 of Article I of the Constitution"). The government, joined by Brzonkala, defended section 13981 as an appropriate exercise of Congress' power to regulate interstate commerce on the ground that violence against women is a widespread social problem with ultimate effects on the national economy. They defended section 13981 as an exercise of Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment on the grounds that bias and discrimination against women in the state criminal justice systems often deny legal redress to the victims of gender-motivated crimes of violence and that such denials may violate the Equal Protection Clause.

In a thorough opinion, the district court concluded that Brzonkala stated a statutory claim against defendant Morrison, but held that Congress was without authority under the Constitution to enact section 13981. 935 F.Supp. 779 (W.D.Va.1996). With respect to whether section 13981 could be justified under Congress' power "[t]o regulate Commerce ... among the several States," U.S. Const. art. I, § 8, cl. 3, the district court meticulously canvassed the reasoning of Lopez, the Supreme Court's recent decision that invalidated the Gun-Free School Zones Act of 1990 as an unconstitutional exercise of Congress' Commerce Clause power. 935 F.Supp. at 785-88. The district court concluded that section 13981, like the Gun-Free School Zones Act, regulated neither the channels of interstate commerce nor the instrumentalities of interstate commerce, and thus could be upheld, if at all, only as a regulation of an activity that "substantially affects" interstate commerce. Id. at 786. Applying Lopez 's "substantially affects" test to section 13981, the district court concluded that,like the Gun-Free School Zones Act, section 13981 could not be sustained under the Commerce Clause both because it regulated noneconomic activity (private acts of gender-motivated violence) without any jurisdictional requirement limiting its application only to particular acts of violence that in fact affect interstate commerce and because the practical implications of concluding that gender-motivated violence was sufficiently related to interstate commerce to justify its regulation would be to grant Congress power to regulate virtually the whole of criminal and domestic relations law. Id. at 788-93. The district court reasoned that these failings rendered section 13981 materially indistinguishable from the Gun-Free School Zones Act invalidated in Lopez, and that the asserted differences between section 13981 and the Gun-Free School Zones Act--that Congress made more extensive findings with respect to section 13981, that section 13981 imposes only civil and not criminal liability, and that there are arguably slightly "fewer steps of causation" in the chain from gender-motivated violence to an effect on interstate commerce--were, essentially, superficial distinctions in light of the Supreme Court's controlling reasoning in Lopez. Id.

Turning to Section 5, the district court then concluded that section 13981 was not "appropriate legislation" "to enforce" the guarantee that "[n]o State shall ... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." U.S. Const. amend. XIV, §§ 1, 5. In this regard, the district court concluded, first, that section 13981, which regulates private acts of gender-motivated violence, could not be reconciled with controlling Supreme Court precedent holding that Congress may not regulate purely private conduct under Section 5. 935 F.Supp. at 793-94 (citing, among others, Civil Rights Cases, 109 U.S. 3, 3 S.Ct. 18, 27 L.Ed. 835 (1883)). Second, the district court reasoned that, even if Congress could regulate some private conduct under Section 5 as a means of remedying violations of the Equal Protection Clause by the States, section 13981 was nonetheless invalid because it was not a closely tailored means to that end:

[Section 13981] is tailored to remedy conduct other than the conduct giving rise to the equal protection concern. [Section 13981] compensates victims for the violence directed against them because of their gender, not for the states' denial of equal protection.... The statute is overbroad: many women who do not suffer Fourteenth Amendment violations at the hands of the state system would still have a [section 13981] claim. A woman in a state with fair rape laws who is raped and whose rapist receives the maximum sentence may still have a [section 13981] claim. That woman may receive compensation via [section 13981] despite having suffered no denial of her equal protection rights. [Section 13981] is also too narrow: many women who suffer clear violations of their Fourteenth Amendment rights would not have a [section 13981] remedy, because the crime was not based on the woman's gender. These women would not receive any compensation despite the fact that the states clearly denied them equal protection of the laws.

Id. at 800. Finally, the district court concluded that section 13981 was not even aimed at remedying violations of the Equal Protection Clause by the States, primarily because it regulates the perpetrators of gender-motivated violence rather than the States themselves or those acting under color of state law. Accordingly, the district court concluded that "[n]o reasonable possibility exists that, in enacting [section 13981], Congress has enforced the Fourteenth Amendment mandate that '[n]o State shall ... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws,' " id. at 801 (quoting U.S. Const. amend. XIV, § 1), and that "[n]o reasonable possibility exists that [section 13981] will remedy any legitimate Fourteenth Amendment concern." Id.

The government and Brzonkala appealed this decision, and, on December 23, 1997, a divided panel of this court reversed the judgment of the district court, holding that section 13981 was a legitimate exercise of Congress' power under the Commerce Clause. 132 F.3d 949 (4th Cir.1997). By order dated February 2, 1998, the full court vacated the judgment and opinion of that panel, and, on March 3, 1998, we reheard the case en banc.

As a threshold matter, we must determine whether Brzonkala has stated a claim under section 13981 sufficient to withstand appellees' motion to dismiss under Rule 12(b)(6) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. We hold that Brzonkala has properly stated a claim under section 13981 against appellee Morrison. We do not reach, because it is unnecessary to do so, the question of whether her complaint properly states a section 13981 claim against appellee Crawford.

Section 13981 provides a civil remedy to parties injured by "a crime of violence motivated by gender." 42 U.S.C. § 13981(c). The statute defines the term "crime of violence" by reference to existing state and federal law. Id. § 13981(d)(2) (defining the term to include "an act or series of acts that would constitute a felony" "and that would come within the meaning of State or Federal offenses"). Such a crime is defined to be "motivated by gender" for the purposes of the statute when that crime is "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." Id. § 13981(d)(1); see also id. § 13981(e)(1) (no cause of action "for random acts of violence unrelated to gender or for acts that cannot be demonstrated, by a preponderance of the evidence, to be motivated by gender").

Crawford and Morrison concede that Brzonkala's complaint alleges that they have committed "crime[s] of violence" within the meaning of the statute. Cf. J.A. at 96-97 (complaint alleging that Morrison and Crawford's conduct toward Brzonkala violated Virginia criminal law in several respects). They challenge, however, Brzonkala's allegation that they acted "because of gender or on the basis of gender, and due, at least in part, to an animus based on the victim's gender." 42 U.S.C. § 13981(d)(1).

Brzonkala has explicitly alleged that the defendants-appellees' actions "were motivated wholly by discriminatory animus toward her gender and were not random acts of violence." J.A. at 24. As it relates to Morrison, this allegation of gender motivation is supported and corroborated by Brzonkala's allegation that Morrison stated publicly that he "like[d] to get girls drunk and f* * * the s* * * out of them." Id. at 20. Although these allegations do not necessarily compel the conclusion that Morrison acted from animus toward women as a class,and might not even be sufficient, without more, to defeat a motion either for summary judgment or for a directed verdict, we hold that they are sufficient to defeat Morrison's motion to dismiss.3

So concluding, we are faced directly, as appellants urge, with the question whether section 13981 represents a constitutional exercise of Congress' power under either the Commerce Clause of Article I, Section 8, or Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment.

After the Supreme Court's decision in United States v. Lopez, 514 U.S. 549, 115 S.Ct. 1624, 131 L.Ed.2d 626 (1995), but before the Court's decision two years ago in City of Boerne v. Flores, 521 U.S. 507, 117 S.Ct. 2157, 138 L.Ed.2d 624 (1997), the appellants defended section 13981 primarily as a valid exercise of Congress' enforcement authority under Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment. Since the decision in City of Boerne, the appellants have resorted to defending the section primarily as a valid exercise of Congress' power under the Commerce Clause. Therefore, we address ourselves first to this defense of the statute.

In United States v. Lopez, the Supreme Court held that Congress had exceeded its power to regulate interstate commerce in enacting the Gun-Free School Zones Act of 1990 ("GFSZA"), 18 U.S.C. § 922(q). In so holding, the Court reaffirmed that, although the Commerce Clause represents a broad grant of federal authority, that authority is not plenary, but subject to outer limits. See, e.g., Lopez, 514 U.S. at 556-57, 567-68, 115 S.Ct. 1624. And although the Court reaffirmed that congressional power under the Commerce Clause is not limited solely to the regulation of interstate commerce per se, but extends to laws governing activities sufficiently related to interstate commerce to render their regulation necessary and proper to the regulation of interstate commerce, the Court also substantially clarified the scope and the limits of Congress' Article I, Section 8 power. Under the principles articulated by the Court in Lopez, it is evident that 42 U.S.C. § 13981, like the Gun-Free School Zones Act, does not regulate an activity sufficiently related to interstate commerce to fall even within the broad power of Congress under the Commerce Clause.

In demarcating the limits of congressional power to regulate activities that do not themselves constitute interstate commerce, the Court in Lopez made clear that such power does not extend to the regulation of activities that merely have some relationship with or effect upon interstate commerce, but, rather, extends only, as is relevant here, to those activities "having a substantial relation to interstate commerce, ... i.e., those activities that substantially affect interstate commerce." Lopez, 514 U.S. at 558-59, 115 S.Ct. 1624 (emphases added); accord id. at 559, 115 S.Ct. 1624 ("[O]ur case law has not been clear whether an activity must 'affect' or 'substantially affect' interstate commerce in order to be within Congress' power to regulate it under the Commerce Clause. We conclude, consistent with the great weight of our case law, that the proper test requires an analysis of whether the regulated activity 'substantially affects' interstate commerce." (citations omitted)).4

Furthermore, the Court made explicit that whether an activity "substantially affects" interstate commerce such that it may be regulated under the Commerce Clause "is ultimately a judicial rather than a legislative question." Id. at 557 n. 2, 115 S.Ct. 1624 (quoting Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc. v. United States, 379 U.S. 241, 273, 85 S.Ct. 348, 13 L.Ed.2d 258 (1964) (Black, J., concurring)). Thus, the Court not only reaffirmed that the limits of the Commerce Clause are judicially enforceable, see also id. at 557, 115 S.Ct. 1624 ("[T]he power to regulate commerce, though broad indeed, has limits that [t]he Court has ample power to enforce." (internal quotation and citation omitted)); id. at 566, 115 S.Ct. 1624 (referring to "judicially enforceable outer limits" of the Commerce Clause); id. at 580, 115 S.Ct. 1624 (Kennedy, J., concurring) (discussing Court's "duty to recognize meaningful limits on the commerce power of Congress"), it also made clear, as its analysis confirms, that the "substantially affects" test does not contemplate a mere factual or empirical inquiry, but must be understood, in the final analysis, as a legal test, and the phrase "substantially affects interstate commerce" as one of legal art.

In clarifying the content of this legal test, the Court specifically identified two types of laws that it had upheld as regulations of activities that substantially affect interstate commerce: (1) "regulations of activities that arise out of or are connected with a commercial transaction, which viewed in the aggregate, substantially affects interstate commerce," Lopez, 514 U.S. at 561, 115 S.Ct. 1624 (majority), and (2) regulations that include a jurisdictional element to ensure, "through case-by-case inquiry," that each specific application of the regulation involves activity that in fact affects interstate commerce, id.

The Court also emphasized that, any dictum in its previous cases notwithstanding, see infra Part III.E, it had never extended the substantially affects test to uphold the regulation of a noneconomic activity in the absence of a jurisdictional element, see, e.g., id. at 560, 115 S.Ct. 1624 ("Even Wickard, which is perhaps the most far reaching example of Commerce Clause authority over intrastate activity, involved economic activity in a way that the possession of a gun in a school zone does not."); id. at 580, 115 S.Ct. 1624 (Kennedy, J., concurring) ("[U]nlike the earlier cases to come before the Court here neither the actors nor their conduct have a commercial character, and neither the purposes nor the design of the statute have an evident commercial nexus."). And it confirmed that it was unwilling to follow "[t]he broad language" in certain previous cases that had "suggested the possibility of additional expansion" of congressional authority under the Commerce Clause by extending that authority beyond the scope of its previous holdings, Lopez, 514 U.S. at 567, 115 S.Ct. 1624 (majority) ("declin[ing] here to proceed any further"). Most importantly, the Court expressly held that because the Gun-Free School Zones Act "neither regulate[d] a commercial activity nor contain[ed] a requirement that the possession be connected in any way to interstate commerce," id., "it exceed[ed] the authority of Congress '[t]o regulate Commerce ... among the several States ...,' " id. at 551, 115 S.Ct. 1624 (quoting U.S. Const. art. I, § 8, cl. 3) (ellipses in original). Accord id. at 567-68, 115 S.Ct. 1624; cf. id. at 561, 115 S.Ct. 1624 ("[GFSZA] is a criminal statute that by its terms has nothing to do with 'commerce' or any sort of economic enterprise, however broadly one might define those terms.... It cannot, therefore, be sustained under our cases upholding regulations of activities that arise out of or are connected with a commercial transaction, which viewed in the aggregate, substantially affects interstate commerce." (emphasis added)).

That the Court's focus on the failure of the Gun-Free School Zones Act either to regulate economic activity or to include a jurisdictional element was intended to demarcate the outer limits--or, at the very least, the presumptive outer limits, see infra Part III.C--of congressional power under the substantially affects test is explicitly confirmed throughout the majority and concurring opinions. See, e.g., id. at 566, 115 S.Ct. 1624 ("Admittedly, a determination whether an intrastate activity is commercial or noncommercial may in some cases result in legal uncertainty. But, so long as Congress' authority is limited to those powers enumerated in the Constitution, and so long as those enumerated powers are interpreted as having judicially enforceable outer limits, congressional legislation under the Commerce Clause always will engender 'legal uncertainty.' ") (emphasis added); id. at 573-74, 115 S.Ct. 1624 (Kennedy, J., concurring) (listing certain prior cases as "examples of the exercise of federal power where commercial transactions were the subject of regulation" and noting that "[t]hese and like authorities are within the fair ambit of the Court's practical conception of commercial regulation and are not called in question by our decision today"). And such an understanding of the case follows inescapably, as well, from the enormous emphasis placed by the Court--essentially ignored by both the appellants and the dissent--on the "commercial concerns that are central to the Commerce Clause," id. at 583, 115 S.Ct. 1624, and on the corresponding distinction between regulation of commercial or economic activities and regulation of noncommercial, noneconomic activities, see, e.g., id. at 627-28, 115 S.Ct. 1624 (Breyer, J., dissenting) (recognizing the majority's "critical distinction between 'commercial' and non-commercial 'transaction[s]' "); id. at 608, 115 S.Ct. 1624 (Souter, J., dissenting) (similar); cf. Hoffman v. Hunt, 126 F.3d 575, 586-87 (4th Cir.1997) ("The [Lopez ] Court repeatedly pointed to a distinction between the regulation of, on the one hand, those activities that are commercial or economic in nature--or arise out of or are connected with a commercial transaction--and, on the other hand, those activities that are not. In the two instances in which it stated the controlling analysis, the Court focused on the fact that possession of a gun in a school zone was neither itself an economic or commercial activity nor had any connection with such activity.").5

Accordingly, the dissent's assertion that the rule that Congress' power under the Commerce Clause is at least presumptively limited to regulating economic activities and promulgating regulations that include a jurisdictional element is an "unprecedented new rule of law," see infra at 917, is perplexing. For this is precisely the rule repeatedly articulated by the Supreme Court in Lopez, beginning with its holding in the very first paragraph of the opinion:

The [GFSZA] neither regulates a commercial activity nor contains a requirement that the possession be connected in any way to interstate commerce. We hold that the Act exceeds the authority of Congress "[t]o regulate Commerce ... among the several states...." U.S. Const., Art. I, § 8, cl. 3.

Lopez, 514 U.S. at 551, 115 S.Ct. 1624 (ellipses in original); compare infra at 917-18 (omitting second sentence and asserting that majority merely "contends" that this is the rule, while at the same time acknowledging that for this rule we rely upon quotation from Lopez). Far from constituting a "new" rule of law, this rule of law is the law of the land.6

In contrast to the statutes that the Supreme Court has previously upheld as permissible regulations under the substantially affects test, see Lopez, 514 U.S. at 560, 115 S.Ct. 1624; id. at 580, 115 S.Ct. 1624 (Kennedy, J., concurring), but analogously to the Gun-Free School Zones Act, see id. at 551, 115 S.Ct. 1624 (majority), section 13981 neither regulates an economic activity nor contains a jurisdictional element. Accordingly, it cannot be sustained on the authority of Lopez, nor any of the Court's previous Commerce Clause holdings, as a constitutional exercise of Congress' power to regulate interstate commerce.1.

Appellants do not contend that section 13981 regulates economic activity. Nor could they. The statute does not regulate the manufacture, transport, or sale of goods, the provision of services, or any other sort of commercial transaction. Rather, it regulates violent crime motivated by gender animus. Not only is such conduct clearly not commercial, it is not even economic in any meaningful sense. While some violent crimes, such as robbery, may be economically motivated and thus at least arguably "economic" in a loose sense, section 13981 is not directed toward such crimes, but instead is expressly limited to "crime[s] of violence 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." 42 U.S.C. § 13981(d)(1); accord id. § 13981(e)(1) ("Nothing in this section entitles a person to a cause of action ... for random acts of violence unrelated to gender or for acts that cannot be demonstrated, by a preponderance of the evidence, to be motivated by gender ...."); see also S. Rep. No. 103-138, at 52 n.61 (1993) (listing "absence of any other apparent motive" among circumstantial indicia of gender motivation). The statute thus explicitly excludes from its purview those violent crimes most likely to have an economic aspect--crimes arising solely from economic motives--and instead addresses violent crime arising from the irrational motive of gender animus, a type of crime relatively unlikely to have any economic character at all.

That section 13981 may, on occasion, reach activity that arises in part from economic motives does not transform it into a statute regulating economic activity. For Lopez made clear that the Gun-Free School Zones Act regulated activity having "nothing to do with 'commerce' or any sort of economic enterprise, however broadly one might define those terms," Lopez, 514 U.S. at 561, 115 S.Ct. 1624, even though a ban on guns in school zones would appear on its face to regulate activity considerably more likely to arise from economic motivation than is the narrowly circumscribed conduct regulated by section 13981, and even though, as the Supreme Court was doubtless aware, the defendant in Lopez itself admitted that his criminal conduct was economically motivated, see United States v. Lopez, 2 F.3d 1342, 1345 (5th Cir.1993), aff'd, 514 U.S. 549, 115 S.Ct. 1624, 131 L.Ed.2d 626 (1995) (defendant charged with violating the GFSZA by delivering a gun to a student admitted that he had been promised $40 for the delivery).

Not only is violent crime motivated by gender animus not itself even arguably commercial or economic, it also lacks a meaningful connection with any particular, identifiable economic enterprise or transaction. Cf. Hoffman, 126 F.3d at 587-88 (finding that the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act of 1994 regulated conduct--protests--that "is closely and directly connected with an economic activity"--the operation of abortion clinics). Furthermore, unlike guns in school zones, violence arising from gender animus lacks even a meaningful connection with any specific activity that might arguably be considered economic or commercial in the loosest sense. Compare Lopez, 514 U.S. at 628-30, 115 S.Ct. 1624 (Breyer, J., dissenting) (arguing that GFSZA regulated conduct closely connected with the operation of schools, an arguably commercial activity), with Lopez, 514 U.S. at 565, 115 S.Ct. 1624 (majority) (rejecting Justice Breyer's characterization of schools as commercial).

Finally, section 13981 cannot be sustained as "an essential part of a larger regulation of economic activity, in which the regulatory scheme could be undercut unless the intrastate activity were regulated." Id. at 561, 115 S.Ct. 1624. Although section 13981 addresses private discrimination, and other laws address discrimination in clearly economic contexts, the federal patchwork of antidiscrimination laws can hardly be characterized as a single, interdependent regulatory scheme aimed at commercial or economic activity. While such an understanding of section 13981 might be suggested by certain language in the committee reports, see, e.g., H.R. Conf. Rep. No. 103-711, at 385 (1994), reprinted in 1994 U.S.C.C.A.N. 1839, 1853 ("[C]urrent law provides a civil rights remedy for gender crimes committed in the workplace, but not for crimes of violence motivated by gender committed on the street or in the home."), section 13981 and Title VII--the statute to which the report apparently refers--cannot reasonably be said to constitute a unified statutory scheme. While the two statutes share a general concern with discrimination, they address different kinds of conduct that only occasionally overlap--gender-motivated violence on the one hand, employer discrimination on the other. Rather than creating an integrated regulatory scheme, each statute is obviously written without regard for the concerns that animate the other. For example, section 13981 provides a remedy for gender-motivated violence in the workplace as well as on the street or at home, without regard for the victim's actual or potential employment status, and directly against the violent actor. Title VII, by contrast, provides a remedy only for gender discrimination that can be attributed to the fault of the employer, without regard to whether such discrimination takes the form of violent conduct, and it provides that remedy against the employer, who may or may not be the actual discriminator.

More importantly, even if the federal patchwork of antidiscrimination laws could be characterized as a single, interdependent regulatory scheme, section 13981 itself does not regulate even arguably economic activity. And it is clear from the context in which the Lopez Court observed that the Gun-Free School Zones Act was not "an essential part of a larger regulation of economic activity," Lopez, 514 U.S. at 561, 115 S.Ct. 1624, that the Court did not intend by this statement to authorize the regulation of activity lacking any meaningful economic nexus pursuant to a comprehensive statutory scheme that also regulates economic activity. Rather, it is plain that the Court's language references its discussion of Wickard v. Filburn in the preceding paragraph, and clarifies the constitutional basis of that decision. See id. at 560-61, 115 S.Ct. 1624 (discussing Wickard v. Filburn, 317 U.S. 111, 63 S.Ct. 82, 87 L.Ed. 122 (1942)). As the Court explained, Wickard, which it characterized as "perhaps the most far reaching example of Commerce Clause authority over intrastate activity," id. at 560, 115 S.Ct. 1624, upheld the application to homegrown wheat of a statute "designed to regulate the volume of wheat moving in interstate and foreign commerce in order to avoid surpluses and shortages, and concomitant fluctuation in wheat prices." Id. Although the wheat at issue was not produced for sale, and therefore its production "m[ight] not be regarded as commerce" in the strictest sense, Wickard, 317 U.S. at 125, 63 S.Ct. 82 (quoted in Lopez, 514 U.S. at 556, 115 S.Ct. 1624), it was produced for human consumption, directly satisfying needs that would otherwise be filled by purchase or other commercial transaction, and was thus clearly economic in a general sense, see Lopez, 514 U.S. at 560, 115 S.Ct. 1624 ("Even Wickard ... involved economic activity in a way that the possession of a gun in a school zone does not."). The Court's characterization of Wickard as a case involving economic activity thus makes explicit the Supreme Court's relatively broad understanding of such activity. Id. at 561, 115 S.Ct. 1624 (economic activity includes not just commercial transactions per se, but also "activities that arise out of or are connected with a commercial transaction"); see also id. at 573-74, 115 S.Ct. 1624 (Kennedy, J., concurring) (discussing Court's "practical conception of commercial regulation"); id. at 574, 115 S.Ct. 1624 (discussing "imprecision of content-based boundaries" and rejecting narrow "18th-century" understanding of commerce). And the Court's discussion reaffirms that when Congress enacts a general statutory framework regulating economic activity, its power is not limited to the regulation only of interstate economic activity, but extends to the regulation of purely intrastate economic activity as well. Cf. United States v. Robertson, 514 U.S. 669, 671, 115 S.Ct. 1732, 131 L.Ed.2d 714 (1995) (per curiam) ("The 'affecting commerce' test was developed in our jurisprudence to define the extent of Congress's power over purely intrastate commercial activities that nonetheless have substantial interstate effects.") (second emphasis added); Lopez, 514 U.S. at 559, 115 S.Ct. 1624 ("[W]e have upheld a wide variety of intrastate economic activity where we have concluded that activity substantially affected interstate commerce." (emphases added)). But the decision does not, in such circumstances, authorize the regulation of intrastate conduct falling outside even the Court's relatively generous conception of economic activity.7

It follows, then, that section 13981, even more clearly than the Gun-Free School Zones Act struck down in Lopez, does not fall "within the fair ambit of the Court's practical conception of commercial regulation," Lopez, 514 U.S. at 573-74, 115 S.Ct. 1624 (Kennedy, J., concurring), but is, rather, a "statute that by its terms has nothing to do with 'commerce' or any sort of economic enterprise, however broadly one might define those terms," Lopez, 514 U.S. at 561, 115 S.Ct. 1624 (majority). To hold otherwise would divest the words 'commerce' and 'economic' of any real meaning. Cf. id. at 565, 115 S.Ct. 1624 (rejecting definition of "commercial" activity broad enough to encompass the operation of schools as "lack[ing] any real limits because, depending on the level of generality, any activity can be looked upon as commercial"). Accordingly, section 13981 cannot be sustained on the authority of cases such as Wickard, which have upheld "regulations of activities that arise out of or are connected with a commercial transaction, which viewed in the aggregate, substantially affects interstate commerce." Id. at 561, 115 S.Ct. 1624.

Similarly, and as appellants concede, section 13981 does not have an "express jurisdictional element which might limit its reach to a discrete set of [gender-motivated violent crimes] that additionally have an explicit connection with or effect on interstate commerce." Id. at 562, 115 S.Ct. 1624. Although the criminal statutes enacted by Congress as part of the Violence Against Women Act predicate liability on the crossing of state lines or the entering or leaving of Indian country, see 18 U.S.C. § 2261 (interstate domestic violence); id. § 2262 (interstate violation of a protective order), section 13981 includes no similar jurisdictional requirement, see 42 U.S.C. § 13981(b)-(c) (extending cause of action to "[a]ll persons within the United States" who are victims of gender-motivated crime). Nor does the statute include any language which could possibly be construed to constitute such a jurisdictional element. Cf. United States v. Bass, 404 U.S. 336, 349, 92 S.Ct. 515, 30 L.Ed.2d 488 (1971) (construing statute prohibiting felon from receiving, possessing, or transporting any firearm "in commerce or affecting commerce" to require additional nexus to interstate commerce); Pennsylvania Dep't of Corrections v. Yeskey, 524 U.S. 206, 118 S.Ct. 1952, 1956, 141 L.Ed.2d 215 (1998) (reasoning that unambiguous statute cannot be construed to avoid constitutional concerns). Accordingly, section 13981 cannot be sustained as a statute that contains a jurisdictional element "which would ensure, through case-by-case inquiry, that the [gender-motivated violent act] in question affects interstate commerce." Lopez, 514 U.S. at 561, 115 S.Ct. 1624; cf. United States v. Cobb, 144 F.3d 319, 321-22 (4th Cir.1998); United States v. Wells, 98 F.3d 808, 810-11 (4th Cir.1996).

Because section 13981 neither regulates an economic activity nor includes a jurisdictional element, it cannot be upheld on the authority of Lopez or any other Supreme Court holding demarcating the outer limits of Congress' power under the substantially affects test. See Lopez, 514 U.S. at 551, 115 S.Ct. 1624 ("The Act neither regulates a commercial activity nor contains a requirement that the possession be connected in any way to interstate commerce. We hold that the Act exceeds the authority of Congress '[t]o regulate Commerce ... among the several states ....' ") (quoting U.S. Const. art. I, § 8, cl. 3) (ellipses in original).C.

Even if these two categories of permissible congressional regulations demarcate not the absolute, but only the presumptive outer limits of congressional power under the substantially affects test, such that Congress may regulate noneconomic activities absent jurisdictional elements in at least some circumstances--a proposition not only unsupported by Supreme Court holding, see Lopez, 514 U.S. at 560, 115 S.Ct. 1624; id. at 580, 115 S.Ct. 1624 (Kennedy, J., concurring), but seemingly eschewed by the Court in Lopez, see, e.g., Lopez, 514 U.S. at 551, 560, 567, 115 S.Ct. 1624--we hold that the Commerce power does not extend so far as to support the regulation at issue in this case. A contrary holding would violate the "first principles" of a Constitution that establishes a federal government of enumerated powers, id. at 552, 115 S.Ct. 1624, principles that the Lopez Court believed so important to its constitutional analysis that it both began and ended its opinion with a full discussion of them, id. at 553-58, 564-68, 115 S.Ct. 1624, and that even the government is forced to concede lie at the heart of the Court's reasoning in Lopez, see Reply Br. of Intervenor United States at 14 ("The [Lopez ] decision thus turned largely on the threat posed by the statute to principles of federalism."); Supp. Br. of Intervenor United States at 4 ("Federalism concerns were, of course, crucial in Lopez.").

Consistent with these principles, Lopez affirms that we must evaluate carefully the implications of our holdings upon our federal system of government and that we may not find an activity sufficiently related to interstate commerce to satisfy the substantially affects test in reliance upon arguments which, if accepted, would eliminate all limits on federal power and leave us "hard pressed to posit any activity by an individual that Congress is without power to regulate." Lopez, 514 U.S. at 564, 115 S.Ct. 1624; see also id. at 567, 115 S.Ct. 1624 (admonishing that courts are not to "pile inference upon inference in a manner that would bid fair to convert congressional authority under the Commerce Clause to a general police power of the sort retained by the States"). This is so especially when the regulated activity falls within an area of the law "where States historically have been sovereign," id. at 564, 115 S.Ct. 1624, and countenance of the asserted federal power would blur "the boundaries between the spheres of federal and state authority" and obscure "political responsibility," id. at 577, 115 S.Ct. 1624 (Kennedy, J. concurring).

Lopez, therefore, is emphatic that the scope of the interstate commerce power

"must be considered in the light of our dual system of government and may not be extended so as to embrace effects upon interstate commerce so indirect and remote that to embrace them, in view of our complex society, would effectually obliterate the distinction between what is national and what is local and create a completely centralized government."

Lopez, 514 U.S. at 557, 115 S.Ct. 1624 (quoting NLRB v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp., 301 U.S. 1, 37, 57 S.Ct. 615, 81 L.Ed. 893 (1937)); see also id . at 567, 115 S.Ct. 1624 (quoting A.L.A. Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States, 295 U.S. 495, 554, 55 S.Ct. 837, 79 L.Ed. 1570 (1935) (Cardozo, J., concurring)) (noting that everything affects interstate commerce to some degree, but rejecting "view of causation that would obliterate the distinction between what is national and what is local in the activities of commerce" (internal quotation marks omitted)); id. at 567-68, 115 S.Ct. 1624 (refusing to rely on arguments that obliterate "distinction between what is truly national and what is truly local"); id. at 580, 115 S.Ct. 1624 (Kennedy, J., concurring) ("In a sense any conduct in this interdependent world of ours has an ultimate commercial origin or consequence, but we have not yet said the commerce power may reach so far.").

We could perhaps reconcile with these "first principles" of federalism a holding that Congress may regulate, even in the absence of jurisdictional elements, noneconomic activities that are related to interstate commerce in a manner that is clear, relatively direct, and distinct from the type of relationship that can be hypothesized to exist between every significant activity and interstate commerce. See, e.g., United States v. Bird, 124 F.3d 667, 677 n. 11 (5th Cir.1997) ("[I]n determining whether the regulated intrastate activity substantially affects interstate commerce, 'substantial' must be understood to have reference not only to a quantitative measure but also to qualitative ones; effects which are too indirect, remote, or attenuated--or are seen only by piling 'inference upon inference'--are not substantial."); cf. Hoffman, 126 F.3d at 587 (holding that obstruction of abortion clinic entrances "is closely connected with, and has a direct and profound effect on, the interstate commercial market in reproductive health care services").

In this case, however, we can discern no such distinct nexus between violence motivated by gender animus and interstate commerce. Indeed, to sustain section 13981 as a constitutional exercise of the Commerce power, not only would we have to hold that congressional power under the substantially affects test extends to the regulation of noneconomic activities in the absence of jurisdictional elements, but we would also have to conclude that violence motivated by gender animus substantially affects interstate commerce by relying on arguments that lack any principled limitations and would, if accepted, convert the power to regulate interstate commerce into a general police power.

Echoing the government's arguments in Lopez, the appellants argue that violence motivated by gender animus imposes medical and legal costs upon its victims; discourages those who fear such violence from traveling, working, or transacting business at times or in places that they consider unsafe (thereby deterring some interstate travel, employment, and transactions); and, as a result, inhibits the productivity of its actual or potential victims and decreases the supply and demand for interstate products. See Br. of Appellant Brzonkala at 37; cf. Supp. Br. of Appellant Brzonkala at 3 (noting effects of gender-motivated violence "on employment, health care, housing, criminal justice, interstate travel and consumer spending"). These arguments closely resemble, and are functionally equivalent to, the arguments advanced by the government in Lopez:

The Government argues that possession of a firearm in a school zone may result in violent crime and that violent crime can be expected to affect the functioning of the national economy in two ways. First, the costs of violent crime are substantial, and, through the mechanism of insurance, those costs are spread throughout the population. Second, violent crime reduces the willingness of individuals to travel to areas within the country that are perceived to be unsafe. The Government also argues that the presence of guns in schools poses a substantial threat to the educational process by threatening the learning environment. A handicapped educational process, in turn, will result in a less productive citizenry. That, in turn, would have an adverse effect on the Nation's economic well-being.

Lopez, 514 U.S. at 563-64, 115 S.Ct. 1624 (citations omitted). As in Lopez, appellants rely in essence on the costs of violent crime (including the deterrence of interstate travel and other similar interstate activities) and on decreased national productivity (including reduced employment, production, and demand), both of which ultimately affect the national economy, and presumably interstate commerce as well. But as the arguments are the same, so also does the Supreme Court's categorical ejection in Lopez of such attenuated links to interstate commerce gain control:

We pause to consider the implications of the Government's arguments. The Government admits, under its "costs of crime" reasoning, that Congress could regulate not only all violent crime, but all activities that might lead to violent crime, regardless of how tenuously they relate to interstate commerce. Similarly, under the Government's "national productivity" reasoning, Congress could regulate any activity that it found was related to the economic productivity of individual citizens: family law (including marriage, divorce, and child custody), for example. Under the theories that the Government presents in support of [the GFSZA], it is difficult to perceive any limitation on federal power, even in areas such as criminal law enforcement or education where States historically have been sovereign. Thus, if we were to accept the Government's arguments, we are hard pressed to posit any activity by an individual that Congress is without power to regulate.

Id. at 564, 115 S.Ct. 1624 (citation omitted); see also id. at 600, 115 S.Ct. 1624 (Thomas, J., concurring) ("When asked at oral argument if there were any limits to the Commerce Clause, the government was at a loss for words.").8

It is unsurprising that appellants must resort to such arguments. Just as it is impossible to link violence motivated by gender animus with any particular, identifiable economic transaction or enterprise, see supra Part III.B.1, it is similarly impossible to link such violence with a particular interstate market or with any specific obstruction of interstate commerce. Cf. Hoffman, 126 F.3d at 587 (noting close and direct relationship between obstruction of abortion clinic entrances and the interstate commercial market in reproductive health care services); Leshuk, 65 F.3d at 1112 (noting relationship between the manufacture of marijuana and the interstate market in illegal drugs). Rather, to the extent violence motivated by gender animus affects interstate commerce, it does so only in the same way that any other significant problem does. Like violence in schools, violent crime generally, and many other less visible though still significant problems, violent crime motivated by gender animus undoubtedly imposes costs on, and decreases the productivity of, its victims. As with other such problems, to the extent violent crime motivated by gender animus is widespread, these costs and productivity losses in the aggregate will ultimately, though indirectly, affect the national economy. Cf., e.g., Carol Krucoff, Get Moving, Wash. Post, Aug. 12, 1997, Health Section, at 12 (quoting director of Center for Disease Control as predicting annual savings of $4 billion in medical costs if only one-fourth of sedentary people were to exercise); 140 Cong. Rec. S14211 (1994) (statement of Sen. Hatfield) (estimating annual cost of accidents, medical problems, and reduced productivity, due to insomnia at between $92.5 and $107.5 billion). And, presumably, any adverse effect on the national economy will eventually also affect interstate commerce.

However, though the Supreme Court has, in cases such as Wickard, relied on relatively sweeping and permissive reasoning of this kind--including looking to the aggregate effects of entire classes of activities and indulging in attenuated chains of inferences--to find that intrastate economic activity substantially affects interstate commerce, Lopez clearly forecloses either reliance upon such authority or application of such analysis to sustain congressional regulation of noneconomic activities such as the conduct reached by section 13981. Compare Lopez, 514 U.S. at 558, 115 S.Ct. 1624 ("[W]here a general regulatory statute bears a substantial relation to commerce, the de minimis character of individual instances arising under that statute is of no consequence." (citation omitted; emphasis added)), with id. at 561, 115 S.Ct. 1624 (explaining that, because GFSZA was "a criminal statute" having "nothing to do with 'commerce' or any sort of economic enterprise," it could not "be sustained under [the Court's] cases upholding regulation of activities that arise out of or are connected with a commercial transaction, which viewed in the aggregate, substantially affects interstate commerce." (emphasis added)); see also id. at 567, 115 S.Ct. 1624 ("The possession of a gun in a local school zone is in no sense an economic activity that might, through repetition elsewhere, substantially affect any sort of interstate commerce." (emphases added)); id. at 563, 115 S.Ct. 1624 (similar); id. at 567, 115 S.Ct. 1624 (refusing to "pile inference upon inference" to find a substantial effect on interstate commerce); id. at 565, 115 S.Ct. 1624 (rejecting, as excessively permissive, Justice Breyer's three-step analysis of the relationship between gun-related crime and interstate commerce). To extend such reasoning beyond the context of statutes regulating economic activities and uphold a statute regulating noneconomic activity merely because that activity, in the aggregate, has an attenuated, though real, effect on the economy, and therefore presumably on interstate commerce, would be effectively to remove all limits on federal authority, and to render unto Congress a police power impermissible under our Constitution. See, e.g., id. at 564, 115 S.Ct. 1624.9

This case, in fact, draws into sharp relief the sweeping implications for our federal system of government that would follow were we, in reliance on such reasoning, to extend congressional power under the substantially affects test to the regulation of noneconomic conduct remote from interstate commerce. For here, not only could the logic of the arguments upon which the appellants must rely justify congressional regulation of any significant activity, but the regulation in support of which these arguments are marshaled also intrudes upon areas of the law "to which States lay claim by right of history and expertise." Id. at 583, 115 S.Ct. 1624 (Kennedy, J., concurring). Thus, in this case, concerns of federalism, far from hypothetical, are immediate and concrete. First, although 42 U.S.C. § 13981(c) provides a civil remedy, the underlying conduct to which the remedy attaches is violent crime, see id. § 13981(d)(2), conduct that has traditionally been regulated by the States through their criminal codes and laws of intentional torts. Compare id. (defining "crime of violence" through incorporation of state and federal criminal law), with Lopez, 514 U.S. at 561 n. 3, 115 S.Ct. 1624 ("Under our federal system, the States possess primary authority for defining and enforcing the criminal law.... When Congress criminalizes conduct already denounced as criminal by the States, it effects a change in the sensitive relation between federal and state criminal jurisdiction." (citations and internal quotation marks omitted; emphasis added)). Appellants contend that section 13981 neither duplicates state criminal laws nor overrides these or any other state laws, but merely provides a civil remedy for conduct that is already proscribed by the States. Therefore, they argue, the provision does not implicate the sensitive balance between state and federal criminal authority.10 Even were appellants' description of section 13981 wholly accurate, we would reject their conclusion. For when the federal government provides a remedy for violent crime in addition to that provided by the States, it both involves itself in the punishment of such crime and increases the total penalty for such crime beyond that provided by the laws of the States.11 Moreover, this federal involvement will inescapably lead to changes in the allocation of state law enforcement and judicial resources, and even in substantive state law, by altering the underlying enforcement realities against which all such allocative and legislative decisions are made. Thus, it is clear that the balance between federal and state responsibility for the control of violent crime is implicated not only by federal criminal statutes, but also by any federal sanction for such crime, even in the form of civil remedy. See Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, Welcoming Remarks: National Conference on State-Federal Judicial Relationships, 78 Va.L.Rev. 1657, 1660 (1992) (noting section 13981's "potential to create needless friction and duplication among the state and federal systems"); cf. Lopez, 514 U.S. at 582, 115 S.Ct. 1624 (Kennedy, J., concurring) (approving argument that "injection of federal officials into local problems causes friction and diminishes accountability of state and local governments" (citation omitted)).

As its proclamation of a new, substantive right "to be free from crimes of violence motivated by gender" suggests, however, section 13981 does not merely provide a federal remedy for certain violent conduct defined by the States as felonious. 42 U.S.C. § 13981(b). Although the statute does provide a remedy for such conduct, it also provides a remedy for certain federally defined violent felonies, "whether or not those acts were committed in the special maritime, territorial, or prison jurisdiction of the United States." Id. § 13981(d)(2)(A). That is, under the plain language of the statute, a plaintiff may sue for gender-motivated violent conduct that would, if it occurred within an area of special federal jurisdiction, constitute a felony under the relatively comprehensive criminal code adopted by Congress to govern such areas, see, e.g., 18 U.S.C. §§ 1111, 1118 (murder); id. § 1112 (manslaughter); id. § 1113 (attempted murder and manslaughter); id. § 113 (assault); id. § 114 (maiming); id. § 2241 (rape); id. § 1201 (kidnapping); id. § 81 (arson), even when the conduct occurs outside such a federal enclave, and even if the relevant federal law differs substantively from the law of the state in which the conduct occurs. Indeed, the apparent purpose of this provision is to create a minimum level of substantive protection--tied to federal definitions of violent crimes and therefore subject to ready congressional calibration--that is unaffected by individual variation among the criminal laws of the several States.

Further, to the extent that section 13981's remedy is limited to violent acts constituting felonies as defined by state law, the statute provides a remedy for such conduct, "whether or not those acts have actually resulted in criminal charges, prosecution, or conviction," 42 U.S.C. § 13981(d)(2)(A); id. § 13981(e)(2) (same); cf. id. § 13981(d)(2)(B) (abrogating certain defenses that may exist under state law), and in many instances in which such violence would not be actionable under state tort law, see id. § 13981(c)-(d)(2)(B) (providing cause of action in cases in which a civil remedy may not exist under state law); 28 U.S.C. § 1658 (providing four-year statute of limitations which is considerably longer than the limitations periods for intentional torts in most States); cf. 42 U.S.C. § 1988(b) (successful section 13981 plaintiff may recover attorneys' fees).

Thus, not only does section 13981 provide a federal remedy for violent crime in addition to those remedies already provided by the laws of the States--thereby increasing the total penalty for such crime--it also provides such a remedy for violence that the States would leave unpunished, whether for reasons of state criminal-law policy, prosecutorial discretion, or state tort-law policy. And the statute deliberately disregards the limits of state criminal and civil law, purportedly in response to the States' failure properly to enforce their criminal and tort laws against gender-motivated violent criminals. See infra Parts III.D.2, IV. By responding to this alleged failure of the States not with a remedy against the States or their officers, as would a civil rights statute properly enacted pursuant to Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment, see infra Part IV.A, but instead with a remedy against the violent criminals themselves, Congress not only has encroached upon the States' ability to determine when and how violent crime will be punished, see Lopez, 514 U.S. at 581, 115 S.Ct. 1624 (Kennedy, J., concurring) (noting States' abilities "as laboratories for experimentation to devise various solutions" for problems whose "best solution is far from clear"); id. at 583, 115 S.Ct. 1624 (GFSZA impermissibly "forecloses the States from experimenting and exercising their own judgment in an area to which States lay claim by right of history and experience"), but in so doing has blurred the boundary between federal and state responsibility for the deterrence and punishment of such crime. Accordingly, the citizens of the States will not know which sovereign to hold accountable for any failure to address adequately gender-motivated crimes of violence. See Lopez, 514 U.S. at 576-77, 115 S.Ct. 1624 (Kennedy, J., concurring) ("If ... the Federal and State Governments are to control each other ... and hold each other in check ... citizens must have some means of knowing which of the two governments to hold accountable for the failure to perform a given function. Federalism serves to assign political responsibility, not to obscure it." (citation omitted)); cf. Printz v. United States, 521 U.S. 98, 117 S.Ct. 2365, 2377, 138 L.Ed.2d 914 (1997) (noting that the Constitution contemplates that "a State's government will represent and remain accountable to its own citizens"); New York v. United States, 505 U.S. 144, 168-69, 112 S.Ct. 2408, 120 L.Ed.2d 120 (1992) ("Accountability is thus diminished when, due to federal coercion, elected state officials cannot regulate in accordance with the views of the local electorate in matters not pre-empted by federal regulation." (citation omitted)). Moreover, it is undisputed that a primary focus of section 13981 is domestic violence, a type of violence that, perhaps more than any other, has traditionally been regulated not by Congress, but by the several States. See, e.g., infra at 849-50 (discussing congressional findings on the extent and effects of domestic violence). Though such violence is not itself an object of family law--an area of law that clearly rests at the heart of the traditional authority of the States, see Lopez, 514 U.S. at 564, 115 S.Ct. 1624--issues of domestic violence frequently arise from the same facts that give rise to issues such as divorce and child custody, which lie at the very core of family law. Although section 13981 explicitly precludes the federal courts from exercising the supplemental jurisdiction that might otherwise extend to such matters, see 42 U.S.C. § 13981(e)(4), the fact that Congress found it necessary to include such a jurisdictional disclaimer confirms both the close factual proximity of the conduct regulated by section 13981 to the traditional objects of family law, cf. United Mine Workers v. Gibbs, 383 U.S. 715, 725, 86 S.Ct. 1130, 16 L.Ed.2d 218 (1966) (holding that supplemental jurisdiction extends to state law claims arising from the same "common nucleus of operative fact" as federal claims); 28 U.S.C. § 1367 (codifying this aspect of Gibbs ), and the extent of section 13981's arrogation to the federal judiciary of jurisdiction over controversies that have always been resolved by the courts of the several States. In the words of the Chief Justice of the United States, section 13981 creates a "new private right of action so sweeping, that the legislation could involve the federal courts in a whole host of domestic relations disputes." Chi. Daily L. Bull., Jan. 2, 1992, at 2 (quoting from Chief Justice Rehnquist's 1991 report on the federal judiciary).12

Section 13981 also sharply curtails the States' responsibility for regulating the relationships between family members by abrogating interspousal and intrafamily tort immunity, the marital rape exemption, and other defenses that may exist under state law by virtue of the relationship that exists between the violent actor and victim. See § 13981(d)(2)(B); cf. Br. of Intervenor United States at 12 (noting that, "as of 1990, seven states still did not include marital rape as a prosecutable offense, and an additional 26 states allowed prosecutions only under restricted circumstances"). Although Congress may well be correct in its judgment that such defenses represent regrettable public policy, the fact remains that these policy choices have traditionally been made not by Congress, but by the States. By entering into this most traditional area of state concern, Congress has not only substantially reduced the States' ability to calibrate the extent of judicial supervision of intrafamily violence, see Lopez, 514 U.S. at 581, 115 S.Ct. 1624(Kennedy, J., concurring), but has also substantially obscured the boundaries of political responsibility, freeing those States that would deny a remedy in such circumstances from accountability for the policy choices they have made, see id. at 576-77, 115 S.Ct. 1624.

The sweeping intrusion of section 13981 into these areas of traditional state concern well illustrates the essentially limitless nature of congressional power that would follow if we were to accept, as sufficient to justify federal regulation under the Commerce Clause, the type of connection with interstate commerce on which appellants rely in this case. Under such an understanding, the only conceivable limit on congressional power to regulate an activity would be the significance of that activity, because any significant activity or serious problem will have an ultimate, though indirect, effect upon the economy, and therefore, at least presumptively, upon interstate commerce as well. While we do not question the significance of the problems posed by violence arising from gender animus, Lopez confirms that such significance, standing alone, simply does not provide a meaningful limitation on federal power, and that a problem does not become a constitutionally permissible object of congressional regulation under the Commerce Clause merely because it is serious. See Lopez, 514 U.S. at 565, 115 S.Ct. 1624 (rejecting Justice Breyer's argument that because "gun-related violence is a serious problem" with an ultimate effect on "trade and commerce," it may be regulated under the Commerce Clause). To hold otherwise would require us to adopt a purely quantitative view of the substantially affects test that would, in light of the relative institutional competencies of the legislature and the judiciary, be difficult to square either with the Lopez Court's clarification of this test as "ultimately a judicial rather than a legislative question," id. at 557 n.2, 115 S.Ct. 1624 (citation omitted), or with the "independent evaluation of constitutionality under the Commerce Clause" that Lopez requires of the courts, id. at 562, 115 S.Ct. 1624; see also Bird, 124 F.3d at 677 n. 11 (noting qualitative aspects of substantially affects test under Lopez ). As this case illustrates, to adopt such an understanding of Congress' power to regulate interstate commerce would be to extend federal control to a vast range of problems falling within even the most traditional areas of state concern--problems such as violent crime generally, educational shortcomings, and even divorce, all of which are significant and as a result unquestionably affect the economy and ultimately interstate commerce. Cf. Lopez, 514 U.S. at 561 n. 3, 115 S.Ct. 1624 ("Under our federal system, the States possess primary authority for defining and enforcing the criminal law.") (citation omitted); Northern Sec. Co. v. United States, 193 U.S. 197, 402, 24 S.Ct. 436, 48 L.Ed. 679 (1904) (Holmes, J., dissenting) ("Commerce depends upon population, but Congress could not, on that ground, undertake to regulate marriage and divorce."). Such a sweeping interpretation of the Congress' power would arrogate to the federal government control of every area of activity that matters, reserving to the States authority over only the trivial and the insignificant.

After Lopez, it is simply insufficient to contend, as does the dissent, that principles of federalism are implicated only if a federal law "directly supersede[s] official state action in an area of traditional state concern. " See infra at 930; see also id. at 928 (asserting that "Lopez stands for the proposition that Commerce Clause legislation may be unconstitutional if it directly supersedes official state action in an area of traditional state concern"); id. at 930 ("When a federal statute directly supersedes official state action in an area of traditional state concern, then (and only then) may a court properly consider whether the rationale supporting the statute contains an inherent limiting principle."). Plainly put, neither the language nor the logic of Lopez permits, much less supports, such a parsimonious view of the rights of the States in our federal system. If anything, the Court in Lopez, as it has been over the past ten years or so, was at pains to express quite the opposite view, especially where, as here, the reasoning advanced in support of a given federal intrusion upon the prerogatives of the States would, if summoned, support a power in the Congress that is, for all intents and purposes, without limit. See, e.g., Lopez, 514 U.S. at 564, 115 S.Ct. 1624 ("Under the theories that the Government presents ... it is difficult to perceive any limitation on federal power, even in areas where States historically have been sovereign."); id. at 567, 115 S.Ct. 1624 (rejecting reasoning "that would bid fair to convert congressional authority under the Commerce Clause to a general police power of the sort retained by the States"); id. at 580, 115 S.Ct. 1624 (Kennedy, J., concurring) ("[W]e must inquire whether the exercise of national power seeks to intrude upon an area of traditional state concern."); id. at 583, 115 S.Ct. 1624 (noting "tendency of this statute to displace state regulation in areas of traditional state concern" and explaining that "[w]hile the intrusion on state sovereignty may not be as severe in this instance as in some of our recent Tenth Amendment cases, the intrusion is nonetheless significant" and "contradicts the federal balance").

In short, to hold that an attenuated and indirect relationship with interstate commerce of the sort asserted here is sufficient to bring within Congress' power to regulate such commerce the punishment of gender-motivated violent crime, an activity that has nothing to do with commerce and that has traditionally been regulated by the States, we would have to do what the Supreme Court has never done, and what the Lopez Court admonished us not to do: "pile inference upon inference in a manner that would bid fair to convert congressional authority under the Commerce Clause to a general police power of the sort retained by the States" and "conclude that the Constitution's enumeration of powers does not presuppose something not enumerated,and that there never will be a distinction between what is truly national and what is truly local." Id. at 567-68, 115 S.Ct. 1624 (citations omitted). Like the Supreme Court, "[t]his we are unwilling to do." Id. at 568, 115 S.Ct. 1624.

To the extent that appellants even acknowledge the precedential force of Lopez, see infra Part III.E, they attempt to distinguish that decision primarily in two ways. First, they argue that here, unlike in Lopez, the relationship between the regulated activity and interstate commerce upon which they rely is not just identified by them alone, but is also documented by congressional findings to which we are obliged to defer. Second, they contend that section 13981 regulates conduct implicating civil rights, that civil rights is an area of manifest federal concern, and that therefore the regulation of the conduct here, despite its noneconomic character and its lack of a close connection to interstate commerce, does not offend the first principles of federalism. Appellants argue that these distinctions are sufficient grounds for upholding the constitutionality of section 13981 under the Commerce Clause. We disagree.

It is true that section 13981, unlike the Gun-Free School Zones Act as originally enacted, is accompanied by congressional findings regarding the extent and effects of the problem it addresses. However, though Congress' legislative expertise is entitled to deference, Lopez is unmistakable that our deference is not, and cannot be, absolute. And the principles articulated in that decision leave little doubt that the findings here are simply inadequate to sustain section 13981 as a constitutional exercise of Congress' power under Article I, Section 8.

(a)

The Lopez Court acknowledged that "legislative findings, and indeed even congressional committee findings," may assist the courts in determining constitutionality under the Commerce Clause. Lopez, 514 U.S. at 562, 115 S.Ct. 1624; see also id. at 563, 115 S.Ct. 1624 (noting the lack of findings that "would enable [the Court] to evaluate the legislative judgment that the activity in question substantially affected interstate commerce, even though no such substantial effect was visible to the naked eye"). The Court emphasized, however, that "[s]imply because Congress may conclude that a particular activity substantially affects interstate commerce does not necessarily make it so." Id. at 557 n. 2, 115 S.Ct. 1624 (citation omitted). Rather, because the question of whether particular activities "affect interstate commerce sufficiently to come under the constitutional power of Congress to regulate them is ultimately a judicial rather than a legislative question," id., we cannot sustain a statute solely on the strength of a congressional finding as to the factual relationship between a particular activity and interstate commerce. Instead, we must undertake an "independent evaluation" to determine whether, as a legal matter, the substantially affects test is satisfied. Id. at 562, 115 S.Ct. 1624 (noting that congressional findings may be considered "as part of our independent evaluation of constitutionality under the Commerce Clause" (emphases added)); cf. id. at 563, 115 S.Ct. 1624 (stating that congressional findings "enable us to evaluate the legislative judgment that the activity in question substantially affected interstate commerce" (emphasis added)); id. at 559, 115 S.Ct. 1624 ("[W]e have upheld a variety of congressional Acts regulating intrastate economic activity where we have concluded that the activity substantially affected interstate commerce." (emphasis added)).

Appellants concede, as they must, that, under Lopez, findings are not "conclusive," Reply Br. of Intervenor United States at 12, "that a court is not bound by congressional findings," Supp. Br. of Intervenor United States at 4, that "[C]ongress cannot, by fiat, establish a substantial effect on interstate commerce where none exists," id., and that "a court must conduct an independent investigation," id.; cf. Br. of Appellant Brzonkala at 35 n. 29 (acknowledging "[t]he Lopez decision's recognition that a law's constitutionality ultimately is a judicial decision").

Despite such lip service to the Court's explicit pronouncements in Lopez that congressional findings are not conclusive of the constitutional inquiry, however, appellants contend that the Gun-Free School Zones Act's primary and dispositive flaw was that Congress did not document the connection between the conduct regulated by that Act and interstate commerce. In support of this contention, appellants cite the Lopez Court's cursory mention of the lack of congressional findings that might have "enable[d] [it] to evaluate the legislative judgment that the activity in question substantially affected interstate commerce, even though no such substantial effect was visible to the naked eye," Lopez, 514 U.S. at 563, 115 S.Ct. 1624. They then construe that Court's refusal, four pages later, to sustain the government's contentions in that case by "pil[ing] inference on inference," id. at 567, 115 S.Ct. 1624, as referring to the lack of congressional documentation of the regulated activity's affect on interstate commerce.13 According to appellants, had Congress provided such documentation, the Court could have sustained the statute without resorting to inference, and would in fact have done so.14

Lopez, however, cannot reasonably be understood to have turned on a mere lack of documentation of the effects of the regulated conduct on interstate commerce. Although the Supreme Court noted that findings could aid it in identifying an effect on interstate commerce that was not "visible to the naked eye," Lopez, 514 U.S. at 563, 115 S.Ct. 1624, the Court never indicated that it did not understand the relationship alleged to exist between guns in school zones and interstate commerce. While the Court did not consult legislative materials to illuminate the contours of this relationship, both the government and the principal dissent detailed how such guns affected inters