Nevada Department of Human Resources v. Hibbs, 538 U.S. 721 (2003), was a United States Supreme Court case which held that the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 was "narrowly targeted" at "sex-based overgeneralization" and was thus a "valid exercise of [congressional] power under Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment.

The Supreme Court has held that Congress may do this only if the private remedies it enacts under Section 5 have "congruence and proportionality" to the constitutional wrongs which it seeks to redress.

The Department granted the request and told Hibbs he could use the full 12 weeks of FMLA leave intermittently as needed between May and December 1997.

The district court granted the Department summary judgment, finding that Hibbs's claim under the FMLA was barred by the Eleventh Amendment.

The majority, in an opinion authored by Chief Justice William Rehnquist, began by reaffirming City of Boerne v. Flores (1997), which was the first case to set down the "congruence and proportionality" requirement for laws enacted under Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Citing Bradwell v. Illinois and Goesaert v. Cleary, the majority acknowledged that there was a long history of legally sanctioned discrimination against women in employment opportunities.

He believed that "[e]ven on this Court's view of the scope of congressional power under § 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment," the FMLA was a valid enactment.

He emphasized, however, that he still disagreed with the Court's interpretation of Congress's power of enforcement under the Fourteenth Amendment, citing dissents in Kimel, Garrett, and Florida Prepaid Postsecondary Education Expense Board v. College Savings Bank.

He doubted that the FMLA was independently valid under Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment, but believed that it was a constitutional use of congressional power under the Commerce Clause.

Rather, the plaintiff had to show that Congress was preventing violations of the Fourteenth Amendment "by the State against which the enforcement action is taken,"[17] which in this case was Nevada.

Because Congress could not rely on what he termed "guilt by association", and because he believed the majority had not shown that each of the 50 states had engaged in gender-based violations of the Equal Protection Clause, Justice Scalia concluded that the FMLA was unconstitutional.

The fact that gender classifications are subjected to heightened scrutiny, he said, "[did] not alter [his] conclusion," because Hibbs still bore the "burden to show that Congress identified a history and pattern of unconstitutional employment discrimination by the States."