Cite as: 531 U. S. 356 (2001)
Breyer, J., dissenting
(quoting New Orleans v. Dukes, 427 U. S. 297, 303 (1976) (per curiam)). To apply a rule designed to restrict courts as if it restricted Congress' legislative power is to stand the underlying principle—a principle of judicial restraint— on its head. But without the use of this burden of proof rule or some other unusually stringent standard of review, it is difficult to see how the Court can find the legislative record here inadequate. Read with a reasonably favorable eye, the record indicates that state governments subjected those with disabilities to seriously adverse, disparate treatment. And Congress could have found, in a significant number of instances, that this treatment violated the substantive principles of justification—shorn of their judicial-restraint-related presumptions—that this Court recognized in Cleburne.
III
The Court argues in the alternative that the statute's damages remedy is not "congruent" with and "proportional" to the equal protection problem that Congress found. Ante, at 374 (citing City of Boerne v. Flores, 521 U. S. 507, 520 (1997)). The Court suggests that the Act's "reasonable accommodation" requirement, 42 U. S. C. § 12112(b)(5)(A), and disparate-impact standard, § 12112(b)(3)(A), "far excee[d] what is constitutionally required." Ante, at 372. But we have upheld disparate-impact standards in contexts where they were not "constitutionally required." Compare Griggs v. Duke Power Co., 401 U. S. 424, 432 (1971), with Washington, supra, at 239, and City of Rome v. United States, 446 U. S. 156, 172-173 (1980), with Mobile v. Bolden, 446 U. S. 55, 62 (1980) (plurality opinion).
And what is wrong with a remedy that, in response to unreasonable employer behavior, requires an employer to make accommodations that are reasonable? Of course, what is "reasonable" in the statutory sense and what is "unreasonable" in the constitutional sense might differ. In other words, the requirement may exceed what is necessary to
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