90
Opinion of the Court
Petitioners place additional reliance on Congress' consideration of a 1966 report prepared by the State of California on age discrimination in its public agencies. See Hearings on H. R. 3651 et al. before the Subcommittee on Labor of the House of Representatives Committee on Education and Labor, 90th Cong., 1st Sess., pp. 161-201 (1967) (Hearings) (reprinting State of California, Citizens' Advisory Committee on Aging, Age Discrimination in Public Agencies (1966)). Like the assorted sentences petitioners cobble together from a decade's worth of congressional reports and floor debates, the California study does not indicate that the State had engaged in any unconstitutional age discrimination. In fact, the report stated that the majority of the age limits uncovered in the state survey applied in the law enforcement and firefighting occupations. Hearings 168. Those age limits were not only permitted under California law at the time, see ibid., but are also currently permitted under the ADEA. See 5 U. S. C. §§ 3307(d), (e); 29 U. S. C. § 623( j) (1994 ed., Supp. III). Even if the California report had uncovered a pattern of unconstitutional age discrimination in the State's public agencies at the time, it nevertheless would have been insufficient to support Congress' 1974 extension of the ADEA to every State of the Union. The report simply does not constitute "evidence that [unconstitutional age discrimination] had become a problem of national import." Florida Prepaid, supra, at 641.
Finally, the United States' argument that Congress found substantial age discrimination in the private sector, see Brief for United States 38, is beside the point. Congress made no such findings with respect to the States. Although we also have doubts whether the findings Congress did make with respect to the private sector could be extrapolated to support a finding of unconstitutional age discrimination in the public sector, it is sufficient for these cases to note that Congress failed to identify a widespread pattern of age dis-
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