340
Stevens, J., dissenting
Assn. v. Novotny, 442 U. S., at 384 (Stevens, J., concurring). A conspiracy that seeks to interfere with law enforcement officers' performance of their duties entails sufficient involvement with the State to implicate the federally protected right to choose an abortion and to give rise to a cause of action under § 1985(3).
We have not previously considered whether class-based animus is an element of a claim under the second clause of § 1985(3). We have, however, confronted the question whether the class-based animus requirement developed in Griffin should extend to another part of the Ku Klux Act, the portion now codified at § 1985(2). That provision, which generally proscribes conspiracies to interfere with federal proceedings, was enacted as part of the same paragraph of the Ku Klux Act that also contained what is now § 1985(3).36
For that reason, in Kush v. Rutledge, 460 U. S. 719 (1983), the defendants contended that the plaintiffs had the burden of proving that the alleged conspiracy to intimidate witnesses had been motivated by the kind of class-based animus described in Griffin. The Court of Appeals rejected this contention. Its reasoning, which we briefly summarized in Kush, is highly relevant here: "Noting the Federal Government's unquestioned constitutional authority to protect the processes of its own courts, and the absence of any need to limit the first part of § 1985(2) to avoid creating a general federal tort law, the Court of Appeals declined to impose the limitation set forth in Griffin v. Breckenridge." 460 U. S., at 723.
Kush suggests that Griffin's strictly construed class-based animus requirement, developed for the first clause of § 1985(3), should not limit the very different second clause. We explained:
36 The full text of § 2 of the 1871 Civil Rights Act, 17 Stat. 13, is quoted in the appendix to the Court's opinion in Kush v. Rutledge, 460 U. S. 719, 727-729 (1983).
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