388
Breyer, J., dissenting
cult to understand why the Court, which applies "minimum 'rational-basis' review" to statutes that burden persons with disabilities, ante, at 366, subjects to far stricter scrutiny a statute that seeks to help those same individuals.
I recognize nonetheless that this statute imposes a burden upon States in that it removes their Eleventh Amendment protection from suit, thereby subjecting them to potential monetary liability. Rules for interpreting § 5 that would provide States with special protection, however, run counter to the very object of the Fourteenth Amendment. By its terms, that Amendment prohibits States from denying their citizens equal protection of the laws. U. S. Const., Amdt. 14, § 1. Hence "principles of federalism that might otherwise be an obstacle to congressional authority are necessarily overridden by the power to enforce the Civil War Amendments 'by appropriate legislation.' Those Amendments were specifically designed as an expansion of federal power and an intrusion on state sovereignty." City of Rome, 446 U. S., at 179. See also Fitzpatrick v. Bitzer, 427 U. S. 445, 456 (1976); Ex parte Virginia, supra, at 345. And, ironically, the greater the obstacle the Eleventh Amendment poses to the creation by Congress of the kind of remedy at issue here—the decentralized remedy of private damages actions—the more Congress, seeking to cure important national problems, such as the problem of disability discrimination before us, will have to rely on more uniform remedies, such as federal standards and court injunctions, 42 U. S. C. § 12188(a)(2), which are sometimes draconian and typically more intrusive. See College Savings Bank v. Florida Pre-paid Postsecondary Ed. Expense Bd., 527 U. S. 666, 704-705 (1999) (Breyer, J., dissenting). Cf. ante, at 374, n. 9. For these reasons, I doubt that today's decision serves any constitutionally based federalism interest.
The Court, through its evidentiary demands, its nondeferential review, and its failure to distinguish between judicial and legislative constitutional competencies, improperly invades a power that the Constitution assigns to Con-
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