386
Breyer, J., dissenting
avoid a constitutional violation. But it is just that power— the power to require more than the minimum—that § 5 grants to Congress, as this Court has repeatedly confirmed. As long ago as 1880, the Court wrote that § 5 "brought within the domain of congressional power" whatever "tends to enforce submission" to its "prohibitions" and "to secure to all persons . . . the equal protection of the laws." Ex parte Virginia, 100 U. S. 339, 346 (1880). More recently, the Court added that § 5's "draftsmen sought to grant to Congress, by a specific provision applicable to the Fourteenth Amendment, the same broad powers expressed in the Necessary and Proper Clause, Art. I, § 8, cl. 18." Morgan, 384 U. S., at 650 (citing McCulloch v. Maryland, 4 Wheat. 316, 421 (1819)).
In keeping with these principles, the Court has said that "[i]t is not for us to review the congressional resolution of . . . the various conflicting considerations—the risk or pervasiveness of the discrimination in governmental services . . . , the adequacy or availability of alternative remedies, and the nature and significance of the state interests that would be affected." 384 U. S., at 653. "It is enough that we be able to perceive a basis upon which the Congress might resolve the conflict as it did." Ibid. See also South Carolina v. Katzenbach, 383 U. S. 301, 324 (1966) (interpreting the similarly worded Enforcement Clause of the Fifteenth Amendment to permit Congress to use "any rational means to effectuate the constitutional prohibition"). Nothing in the words "reasonable accommodation" suggests that the requirement has no "tend[ency] to enforce" the Equal Protection Clause, Ex parte Virginia, supra, at 346, that it is an irrational way to achieve the objective, Katzenbach, supra, at 324, that it would fall outside the scope of the Necessary and Proper Clause, Morgan, supra, at 650, or that it somehow otherwise exceeds the bounds of the "appropriate," U. S. Const., Amdt. 14, § 5.
The Court's more recent cases have professed to follow the longstanding principle of deference to Congress. See Kimel
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