Cite as: 527 U. S. 627 (1999)
Stevens, J., dissenting
compasses legislation that deters or remedies constitutional violations, even if it prohibits conduct that is not itself unconstitutional, and even if it intrudes into spheres of autonomy previously reserved to the States. Id., at 518. Nevertheless, we held that the enactment of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (RFRA) was not an "appropriate" exercise of Congress' enforcement power under § 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment. Id., at 536.
By enacting RFRA Congress sought to change the meaning of the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment as it had been interpreted by this Court, rather than to remedy or to prevent violations of the Clause as we had interpreted it. We held that RFRA had crossed "the line between measures that remedy or prevent unconstitutional actions and measures that make a substantive change in the governing law." Id., at 519-520. Congress' § 5 power is "corrective or preventive, not definitional." Id., at 525. Our extensive review of the legislative history of RFRA made it clear that the statute could not be fairly characterized as a remedial measure, but rather was a legislative attempt "to interpret and elaborate on the meaning" of the Free Exercise Clause. By doing so, Congress had violated the principle that the "power to interpret the Constitution in a case or controversy remains in the Judiciary." Id., at 524.
The difference between the harm targeted by RFRA and the harm that motivated the enactment of the Patent Remedy Act is striking. In RFRA Congress sought to overrule this Court's interpretation of the First Amendment. The Patent Remedy Act, however, was passed to prevent future violations of due process, based on the substantiated fear that States would be unable or unwilling to provide adequate remedies for their own violations of patent holders' rights. Congress' "wide latitude" in determining remedial or preventive measures, see id., at 520, has suddenly become very narrow indeed.
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