Congruence and proportionality Boerne is important for several reasons. One is that it introduced a completely new test for deciding whether Congress had exceeded its Section 5 powers: the "congruence and proportionality" test, a test that has proven to have great importance in the context of the
Eleventh Amendment. Another reason was that it explicitly declared that the Court alone has the ability to state which rights are protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. Still another was that it had First Amendment consequences in that it spelled the end for any legislative attempts to overturn
Employment Division v. Smith. The "congruence and proportionality" requirement replaced the previous theory advanced in
Katzenbach v. Morgan that the Equal Protection Clause is "a positive grant of legislative power authorizing Congress to exercise its discretion in determining the need for and nature of legislation to secure Fourteenth Amendment guarantees". Before the 1997
Boerne decision,
Katzenbach v. Morgan was often interpreted as allowing Congress to go beyond, but not fall short of, the Court's interpretation of the Equal Protection Clause. But that is not how the majority opinion in
Boerne interpreted
Katzenbach: The holding of
Boerne said that only the Court could interpret the Constitution, in order to maintain the "traditional separation of powers between Congress and the Judiciary". Also,
Boerne relied on arguments for protecting the rights that pertain to state governments based on "enumerated powers". The intent of
Boerne was to prevent "a considerable congressional intrusion into the States' traditional prerogatives and general authority". The holding of
Boerne specifically mentioned the state action doctrine of the
Civil Rights Cases as a Court interpretation of the Equal Protection Clause that limits the "remedial or preventive" power of Congress.
Power of enforcement Boerne introduced the "congruence and proportionality" test for deciding whether Congress had exceeded its Section 5 powers to enforce the
Fourteenth Amendment. In
Florida Prepaid Postsecondary Ed. Expense Bd. v. College Savings Bank (1999) the Supreme Court explained the connection between the "congruence and proportionality" test and the power of Congress to enforce the Fourteenth Amendment in the following way: In holding that RFRA could not be justified as "appropriate" enforcement legislation under § 5, the Court emphasized that Congress' enforcement power is "remedial" in nature.
Id., at 519. We recognized that "[l]egislation which deters or remedies constitutional violations can fall within the sweep of Congress' enforcement power even if in the process it prohibits conduct which is not itself unconstitutional and intrudes into 'legislative spheres of autonomy previously reserved to the States.'"
Id., at 518 (citation omitted). We also noted, however, that" '[a]s broad as the congressional enforcement power is, it is not unlimited,'"
ibid., and held that "Congress does not enforce a constitutional right by changing what the right is. It has been given the power 'to enforce,' not the power to determine what constitutes a constitutional violation,"
id., at 519. Canvassing the history of the Fourteenth Amendment and case law examining the propriety of Congress' various voting rights measures, the Court explained: "While the line between measures that remedy or prevent unconstitutional actions and measures that make a substantive change in the governing law is not easy to discern, and Congress must have wide latitude in determining where it lies, the distinction exists and must be observed. There must be a congruence and proportionality between the injury to be prevented or remedied and the means adopted to that end. Lacking such a connection, legislation may become substantive in operation and effect."
Id., at 519-520. We thus held that for Congress to invoke § 5, it must identify conduct transgressing the Fourteenth Amendment's substantive provisions, and must tailor its legislative scheme to remedying or preventing such conduct.
Constitutionality of the RFRA This case has been used to claim that the federal RFRA is unconstitutional. A more precise and accurate phrasing of this claim is that Boerne held the RFRA could not be constitutionally applied to state and local governments. At the federal level, the RFRA remains operative. The constitutionality of one aspect of RFRA as applied to the federal government was confirmed on February 21, 2006, as the Supreme Court ruled against the government in
Gonzales v. O Centro Espirita Beneficente Uniao do Vegetal, , which involved the use of an otherwise illegal substance in a religious ceremony, stating that the federal government must show a compelling state interest in restricting religious conduct.
Historic preservation The Supreme Court's decision in
City of Boerne made a significant impact on the states' abilities to enforce laws, including those pertaining to historic preservation. Under RFRA, an otherwise neutral state law—such as zoning, or historic preservation ordinances—needed to be scrutinized if its enforcement involved a religious group or individual. Therefore, by declaring extension of RFRA to apply against state laws unconstitutional, the ability of the states to establish and maintain historic preservation ordinances was made easier. However, in 2000, Congress enacted the
Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, in which it used the
Spending Clause to require, for localities that receive federal funding, land use laws to accommodate religious freedom, essentially, as if RFRA had been ruled applicable to state law. ==See also==