662
Stevens, J., dissenting
City of Boerne also identified a "proportionality" component to "appropriate" legislation under § 5. Our opinion expressly recognized that "preventive rules are sometimes appropriate" if there is
"a congruence between the means used and the ends to be achieved. The appropriateness of remedial measures must be considered in light of the evil presented. See South Carolina v. Katzenbach, 383 U. S., at 308. Strong measures appropriate to address one harm may be an unwarranted response to another, lesser one. Id., at 334." Id., at 530.
In RFRA we found no such congruence, both because of the absence of evidence of widespread violations that were in need of redress, and because the sweeping coverage of the statute ensured "its intrusion at every level of government, displacing laws and prohibiting official actions of almost every description and regardless of subject matter." Id., at 532.
Again, the contrast between RFRA and the Act at issue in this case could not be more stark. The sole purpose of this amendment is to abrogate the States' sovereign immunity as a defense to a charge of patent infringement. It has no impact whatsoever on any substantive rule of state law, but merely effectuates settled federal policy to confine patent infringement litigation to federal judges. There is precise congruence between "the means used" (abrogation of sovereign immunity in this narrow category of cases) and "the ends to be achieved" (elimination of the risk that the defense of sovereign immunity will deprive some patentees of property without due process of law).
That congruence is equally precise whether infringement of patents by state actors is rare or frequent. If they are indeed unusual, the statute will operate only in those rare cases. But if such infringements are common, or should become common as state activities in the commercial
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