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Opinion of the Court
purportedly targeted by RFRA's substantive provisions. Rather, Congress had uncovered only "anecdotal evidence" that, standing alone, did not reveal a "widespread pattern of religious discrimination in this country." Id., at 531. Second, we found that RFRA is "so out of proportion to a supposed remedial or preventive object that it cannot be understood as responsive to, or designed to prevent, unconstitutional behavior." Id., at 532.
Last Term, we again had occasion to apply the "congruence and proportionality" test. In Florida Prepaid, we considered the validity of the Eleventh Amendment abrogation provision in the Patent and Plant Variety Protection Remedy Clarification Act (Patent Remedy Act). We held that the statute, which subjected States to patent infringement suits, was not appropriate legislation under § 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Patent Remedy Act failed to meet our congruence and proportionality test first because "Congress identified no pattern of patent infringement by the States, let alone a pattern of constitutional violations." 527 U. S., at 640 (emphasis added). Moreover, because it was unlikely that many of the acts of patent infringement affected by the statute had any likelihood of being unconstitutional, we concluded that the scope of the Act was out of proportion to its supposed remedial or preventive objectives. Id., at 647. Instead, "[t]he statute's apparent and more basic aims were to provide a uniform remedy for patent infringement and to place States on the same footing as private parties under that regime." Id., at 647-648. While we acknowledged that such aims may be proper congressional concerns under Article I, we found them insufficient to support an abrogation of the States' Eleventh Amendment immunity after Seminole Tribe. Florida Prepaid, supra, at 648.
C
Applying the same "congruence and proportionality" test in these cases, we conclude that the ADEA is not "appro-
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