Cite as: 529 U. S. 598 (2000)
Breyer, J., dissenting
of individuals in society towards each other, . . . without referring in any manner to any supposed action of the State or its authorities").
The Court responds directly to the relevant "state actor" claim by finding that the present law lacks " 'congruence and proportionality' " to the state discrimination that it purports to remedy. Ante, at 625-626; see City of Boerne v. Flores, 521 U. S. 507, 526 (1997). That is because the law, unlike federal laws prohibiting literacy tests for voting, imposing voting rights requirements, or punishing state officials who intentionally discriminated in jury selection, Katzenbach v. Morgan, 384 U. S. 641 (1966); South Carolina v. Katzenbach, 383 U. S. 301 (1966); Ex parte Virginia, 100 U. S. 339 (1880), is not "directed . . . at any State or state actor." Ante, at 626.
But why can Congress not provide a remedy against private actors? Those private actors, of course, did not themselves violate the Constitution. But this Court has held that Congress at least sometimes can enact remedial "[l]egislation . . . [that] prohibits conduct which is not itself unconstitutional." Flores, supra, at 518; see also Katzen-bach v. Morgan, supra, at 651; South Carolina v. Katzen-bach, supra, at 308. The statutory remedy does not in any sense purport to "determine what constitutes a constitutional violation." Flores, supra, at 519. It intrudes little upon either States or private parties. It may lead state actors to improve their own remedial systems, primarily through example. It restricts private actors only by imposing liability for private conduct that is, in the main, already forbidden by state law. Why is the remedy "disproportionate"? And given the relation between remedy and violation—the creation of a federal remedy to substitute for constitutionally inadequate state remedies—where is the lack of "congruence"?
The majority adds that Congress found that the problem of inadequacy of state remedies "does not exist in all States,
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