298
Opinion of Souter, J.
against private action by the Federal Constitution. 463 U. S., at 833.
It was a most significant step. In going no further than
to affirm the deprivation clause's constitutionality insofar as it applied to conspiracies to infringe federal constitutional rights guaranteed against private action, the Griffin Court had arguably acted with prudent reticence in avoiding a needless ruling on Congress's power to outlaw conspiracies aimed at other rights.8 But in converting this indisputably constitutional object, of giving relief against private conspiracies to violate federal constitutional rights guaranteed against private action, into the exclusive subject matter of the clause with respect to conspiracies to deprive people of federal constitutional rights, the Carpenters Court almost certainly narrowed that clause from the scope Congress had intended. If indeed Congress had meant to confine the statute that narrowly, its application to federal constitutional deprivations in 1871 would not have gone beyond violations of the Thirteenth Amendment, adopted in 1865. (The next clear example of a constitutional guarantee against individual action would not emerge until United States v. Guest, 383 U. S. 745, 759-760, n. 17 (1966), recognizing a right of interstate travel good against individuals as well as governments.) But if Congress had meant to protect no federal constitutional rights outside those protected by the Thirteenth Amendment, it is hard to see why the drafters would not simply have said so, just as in the third and fourth clauses of § 1985(3) they dealt expressly with infringements of voting rights, already guaranteed against abridgment by the Fifteenth Amendment adopted in 1870.
The Carpenters Court might have responded to this objection by suggesting that the textual breadth of the deprivation clause reflects its applicability to conspiracies aimed at violating rights guaranteed under state law or rights guar-8 But see n. 7, supra.
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