The Supreme Court today agreed to decide whether Congress exceeded its authority when it enacted a 1994 law allowing rape victims to sue their attackers.
The court, which has eroded Congress’ power in a series of recent rulings, said it will use a Virginia Tech student’s lawsuit against two football players to study a key provision of the Violence Against Women Act.
A federal appeals court threw out the student’s lawsuit after ruling that Congress’ power to regulate interstate commerce and assure all citizens of equal protection did not authorize it to give rape victims the right to sue their attackers for monetary damages.
The federal law also has criminal provisions, but those are not at issue in the Virginia case.
The case will be argued this winter. A decision is expected sometime in 2000.
Clinton Administration Intervenes
Christy Brzonkala became the first person to sue under the federal law when, in late 1995, she sued Antonio Morrison and James Crawford, alleging that the two student athletes raped her in a dormitory room.
Ms. Brzonkala, who has allowed her name to be disclosed, did not report the alleged rape for several months. No charges were filed against the two men.
When Morrison and Crawford challenged the federal law’s constitutionality, the Clinton administration intervened in the case to defend it.
A federal judge in Virginia ruled that the law’s provision allowing victims of gender-based violence to sue their attackers is invalid, but a three-judge panel of the Richmond-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the ruling and revived Brzonkala’s lawsuit.
The full 4th Circuit court, however, ruled by a 7-4 vote last March that the trial judge was right, and declared that portion of the law unconstitutional.
Calling the law’s purpose “unquestionably laudable,” the appeals court nevertheless ruled that Congress “sought to reach conduct quintessentially within the exclusive purview of the states.”
Congressional Limits at Issue
The March ruling relied heavily on a 1995 Supreme Court decision that struck down as unconstitutional the federal Gun-Free School Zones Act, which made it a federal crime to possess a gun within 1,000 feet of any school.
The justices ruled then that gun possession was insufficiently linked to interstate commerce and usurped states’ authority over such crimes. The decision also noted that Congress had come up with scant connection between gun possession and interstate commerce.
Justice Department lawyers and attorneys for Ms. Brzonkala urged the Supreme Court to reverse the appeals court’s ruling, noting that it conflicts with rulings in which 14 federal trial judges have upheld the 1994 law’s civil rights provision.
The appeals court ruling “places unwarranted limits on Congress’ authority to address a national problem of the first magnitude,” the government’s appeal said.
The appeals were supported in a friend-of-the-court brief submitted by 31 states. They are Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Washington, West Virginia and Wisconsin.
Lawyers for each state joined in telling the court that the 1994 law “does not interfere with state and local governmental efforts to address the problem of gender-motivated violence.”
But lawyers for Morrison and Crawford urged the justices to uphold the appeals court’s ruling, arguing that the government’s contentions “are easily refuted.”
The cases are U.S. vs. Morrison, 99-5, and Brzonkala vs. Morrison, 99-29.
Copyright 1999 The Associated Press.