638
Opinion of the Court
There, this Court held that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (RFRA), 107 Stat. 1488, 42 U. S. C. § 2000bb et seq., exceeded Congress' authority under § 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment, insofar as RFRA was made applicable to the States. RFRA was enacted "in direct response to" this Court's decision in Employment Div., Dept. of Human Resources of Ore. v. Smith, 494 U. S. 872 (1990), which construed the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment to hold that "neutral, generally applicable laws may be applied to religious practices even when not supported by a compelling governmental interest." City of Boerne, supra, at 512, 514. Through RFRA, Congress reinstated the compelling governmental interest test eschewed by Smith by requiring that a generally applicable law placing a "substantial burden" on the free exercise of religion must be justified by a "compelling governmental interest" and must employ the "least restrictive means" of furthering that interest. 521 U. S., at 515-516.
In holding that RFRA could not be justified as "appropriate" enforcement legislation under § 5, the Court emphasized that Congress' enforcement power is "remedial" in nature. Id., at 519. We recognized that "[l]egislation which deters or remedies constitutional violations can fall within the sweep of Congress' enforcement power even if in the process it prohibits conduct which is not itself unconstitutional and intrudes into 'legislative spheres of autonomy previously reserved to the States.' " Id., at 518 (citation omitted). We also noted, however, that " '[a]s broad as the congressional enforcement power is, it is not unlimited,' " ibid., and held that "Congress does not enforce a constitutional right by changing what the right is. It has been given the power 'to enforce,' not the power to determine what constitutes a constitutional violation," id., at 519. Canvassing the history of the Fourteenth Amendment and
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