Cite as: 506 U. S. 263 (1993)
Opinion of Souter, J.
C
Notwithstanding the Griffin Court's decision to read the deprivation clause's equal protection element as more restrictive than Fourteenth Amendment equal protection, the Court recognized that in a different respect the statute remained more expansive than its constitutional counterpart, in being aimed at deprivations of equal protection by purely private conspirators. 403 U. S., at 96-97. This very conclusion, in fact, prompted the further concern that the deprivation clause might by its terms apply to facts beyond Congress's constitutional reach. The Court nonetheless obviated the need to address the scope of congressional power at that time by confining itself to a holding that the statute was constitutional at least insofar as it implemented congressional power to enforce the Thirteenth Amendment and the right to travel freely, each of which was "assertable against private as well as governmental interference." Id., at 105.7
The Court was then only one step away from putting the deprivation clause in its present shape, a step it took in Carpenters. Whereas Griffin had held that requiring a purpose to infringe a federal constitutional right guaranteed against private action was sufficient to allay any fear that the deprivation clause was being applied with unconstitutional breadth, Carpenters turned this sufficient condition into a necessity insofar as conspiracies to deprive any person or class of persons of federal constitutional rights were concerned, by holding that in the case of such a conspiracy no cause of action could be stated without alleging such an ultimate object of depriving the plaintiff of a right protected
7 This prudential step was presumably unnecessary in light of United States v. Guest, 383 U. S. 745, 762 (1966) (Clark, J., concurring); id., at 782 (Brennan, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part), in which a majority of the Court concluded that § 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment empowers Congress to enact laws punishing all conspiracies, with or without state action, that interfere with exercise of Fourteenth Amendment rights.
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