Cite as: 527 U. S. 627 (1999)
Opinion of the Court
case law examining the propriety of Congress' various voting rights measures,5 the Court explained:
"While the line between measures that remedy or prevent unconstitutional actions and measures that make a substantive change in the governing law is not easy to discern, and Congress must have wide latitude in determining where it lies, the distinction exists and must be observed. There must be a congruence and proportionality between the injury to be prevented or remedied and the means adopted to that end. Lacking such a connection, legislation may become substantive in operation and effect." Id., at 519-520.
We thus held that for Congress to invoke § 5, it must identify conduct transgressing the Fourteenth Amendment's substantive provisions, and must tailor its legislative scheme to remedying or preventing such conduct.
RFRA failed to meet this test because there was little support in the record for the concerns that supposedly animated the law. Id., at 530-531. And, unlike the measures in the voting rights cases, RFRA's provisions were "so out of proportion to a supposed remedial or preventive object" that RFRA could not be understood "as responsive to, or designed to prevent, unconstitutional behavior." Id., at 532; see also id., at 534 ("Simply put, RFRA is not designed to identify and counteract state laws likely to be unconstitutional").
Can the Patent Remedy Act be viewed as remedial or preventive legislation aimed at securing the protections of the Fourteenth Amendment for patent owners? Following City of Boerne, we must first identify the Fourteenth Amendment "evil" or "wrong" that Congress intended to remedy, guided
5 See South Carolina v. Katzenbach, 383 U. S. 301 (1966); Katzenbach v. Morgan, 384 U. S. 641 (1966); Oregon v. Mitchell, 400 U. S. 112 (1970); City of Rome v. United States, 446 U. S. 156 (1980).
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