322
Stevens, J., dissenting
lies behind the discriminatory effects from which Congress intended § 1985(3) to protect American citizens. Congress may obviously offer statutory protections against behavior that the Constitution does not forbid, including forms of discrimination that undermine § 1985(3)'s guarantee of equal treatment under the law. Regardless of whether the examples of paternalistic discrimination given above involve a constitutional violation, as a matter of statutory construction it is entirely appropriate to conclude that each would satisfy the class-based animus requirement because none of them poses any danger of converting § 1985(3) into a general tort law or creating concerns about the constitutionality of the statute.
Both forms of class-based animus that the Court proposes are present in this case.
Sex-Based Discrimination
It should be noted that a finding of class-based animus in this case does not require finding that to disfavor abortion is "ipso facto" to discriminate invidiously against women. See ante, at 271. Respondents do not take that position, and they do not rely on abstract propositions about "opposition to abortion" per se. See ante, at 269-270. Instead, they call our attention to a factual record showing a particular lawless conspiracy employing force to prevent women from exercising their constitutional rights. Such a conspiracy, in the terms of the Court's first proposition, may "reasonably be presumed to reflect a sex-based intent." See ante, at 270.
To satisfy the class-based animus requirement of § 1985(3), the conspirators' conduct need not be motivated by hostility toward individual women. As women are unquestionably a protected class, that requirement—as well as the central purpose of the statute—is satisfied if the conspiracy is aimed at conduct that only members of the protected class have the capacity to perform. It is not necessary that the intended effect upon women be the sole purpose of the conspiracy. It
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