Congress's Power to Legislate Control Over Hate Crimes: Selected Legal Theories

Publication Date: November 2005

Publisher: Library of Congress. Congressional Research Service

Author(s):

Research Area: Government

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Abstract:

Congress has no power under the commerce clause over "noneconomic, violent criminal conduct" that does not cross state lines said Chief Justice William Rehnquist in United States v. Morrison. Nor, he added, can the overreach be rectified by calling upon Congress's authority under the Fourteenth Amendment. States can enact hate crime laws, but the reasoning in Morrison appears to impact national legislation targeted at crimes against African-Americans, homosexuals, Jews, Muslims or other ethnic minorities -- at least when such efforts rest solely on the commerce clause and the Fourteenth Amendment. Congress, however, enjoys additional legislative powers under the spending clauses and the legislative clauses of the Thirteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. Extensive, if something less than all encompassing, national legislation may be possible under the confluence of authority conveyed by the commerce clause, spending clause, and the legislative clauses of the constitution's Reconstruction Amendments, provided the limitations of the First, Sixth and Tenth Amendments are observed.