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Stevens, J., dissenting
cases, we apply the intent standard to determine whether a constitutional violation has occurred. In cases under § 1985(3), we apply the class-based animus test not to determine whether a constitutional violation has occurred—the violation is independently established—but to determine whether that violation can be remedied. Given the differing roles the intent standard and the class-based animus requirement play in our jurisprudence, there is no justification for applying the same stringent standards in the context of § 1985(3) as in our constitutional cases.
As a matter of statutory interpretation, I have always believed that rules that place special burdens on pregnant women discriminate on the basis of sex, for the capacity to become pregnant is the inherited and immutable characteristic that "primarily differentiates the female from the male." General Electric Co. v. Gilbert, 429 U. S. 125, 162 (1976) (Stevens, J., dissenting). I continue to believe that that view should inform our construction of civil rights legislation.
That view was also the one affirmed by Congress in the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, 92 Stat. 2076, which amended Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U. S. C. § 2000e et seq.29 The Act categorically expressed Congress' view that
actionable under § 1 of the Ku Klux Act, now 42 U. S. C. § 1983. If private parties jointly participated in the conduct, they, too, would be liable under § 1983. See Lugar v. Edmondson Oil Co., 457 U. S. 922 (1982); Adickes v. S. H. Kress & Co., 398 U. S. 144 (1970). The class-based animus requirement determines whether a private conspiracy to violate the federal right to travel—a right protected against private interference—similarly gives rise to a federal cause of action.
29 The Pregnancy Discrimination Act was passed in reaction to the Court's decision in Gilbert, which relied on Geduldig to uphold a pregnancy exclusion in a private employer's disability insurance plan, challenged under Title VII. In enacting the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, Congress directly repudiated the logic and the result of Gilbert. See Newport News, 462 U. S., at 678 ("When Congress amended Title VII in 1978, it unambiguously expressed its disapproval of both the holding and the reasoning of the Court in the Gilbert decision").
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