352
O'Connor, J., dissenting
of an alternative activity"). The clinics at issue are lawful operations; the women who seek their services do so lawfully. In my opinion, petitioners' unlawful conspiracy to prevent the clinics from serving those women, who are targeted by petitioners by virtue of their class characteristics, is a group-based, private deprivation of the "equal protection of the laws" within the reach of § 1985(3).
The Court finds an absence of discriminatory animus by reference to our decisions construing the scope of the Equal Protection Clause, and reinforces its conclusion by recourse to the dictionary definition of the word "invidious." See ante, at 271-274. The first step would be fitting if respondents were challenging state action; they do not. The second would be proper if the word "invidious" appeared in the statute we are construing; it does not. As noted above, Griffin's requirement of "class-based, invidiously discriminatory animus" was a shorthand description of the congressional purpose behind the legislation that became § 1985(3). Microscopic examination of the language we chose in Griffin should not now substitute for giving effect to Congress' intent in enacting the relevant legislative language, i. e., that "any violation of the right, the animus and effect of which is to strike down the citizen, to the end that he [or she] may not enjoy equality of rights as contrasted with . . . other citizens' rights, shall be within the scope of the remedies of this section." Cong. Globe, 42d Cong., 1st Sess., at 478 (Rep. Shellabarger).
Because § 1985(3) is a statute that was designed to address deprivations caused by private actors, the Court's invocation of our cases construing the reach of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment is misplaced. The Court relies on Geduldig v. Aiello, 417 U. S. 484 (1974), in which we maintained that, for purposes of the Fourteenth Amendment, "not . . . every legislative classification concerning pregnancy is a sex-based classification." Id., at 496, n. 20. But that case construed a constitutional provision
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