Legislative Power - State Sovereignty, Voting Rights, & Tribal Nations Flashcards
Anti-Commandeering Principle
Two Routes to understanding Anti-Commandeering Principle:
Garcia & Baker - A limit on the Federal Government’s ability to legislate States to those which pass the Political Process.
New York; Printz; & Condon - These Three cases help regulate what Federal actions are or are not commandeering.
Integral and Traditional Anti-Commandeering Principles
Functions of state or local government determined to be integral operations of government traditionally left to the states. If a fed law infringed on these, it was unconstitutional. Overruled by Garcia.
New York v. United States (Fed Legislature v. State Legislatures)
In New York, the Supreme Court held that the Federal Government cannot force a State Legislature to pass laws that regulate its citizens.
Underlying this decision is the idea of political accountability for States and the Federal government to ensure that citizens can hold the regulator accountable.
Printz v. United States (Fed Legislature v. State Executive)
In Printz, the Supreme Court held that the Federal Government cannot commandeer State executive officials to regulate or enforce its Federal statutory scheme.
Reno v. Condon (Generally Applicable Exception)
In Condon, the Supreme Court held that the Federal Government can regulate States as states, so long as this regulation is generally applicable (applies to private and public entities) and does not force states to solely regulate citizenry.
Tied in with Condon is the idea of the Supremacy Clause allowing the Federal Government to regulate how the nation as a whole moves forward (within the confines of the Constitutional grant of power).
Voting Rights Act
It institutes a preclearance regime § 4 + 5, and nationwide ban on discrimination § 2.
The Voting Rights Act also incorporates a bailout system to escape the preclearance regime which allows for states or jurisdictions under the provision to move out of the “preclearance” section after achieving certain milestones. However, this bailout is difficult to achieve because the bailout requires that all subunits behave which can be near impossible for larger jurisdictions with multiple sub-jurisdictions.
Shelby County v. Holder
The Supreme Court held that § 4 was unconstitutional as “a statute’s ‘current burdens’ must be justified by “current needs,” and any ‘disparate geographic coverage’ must be ‘sufficiently related to the problem that it targets.’ The coverage formula met that test in 1965, but no longer does so. In the end, the Voting Rights Act is an infringement of State Sovereignty and has substantial “Federalism Costs” which must be weighed against the current needs.
Tied within this idea is the fact that in 1965 the Federal Government’s infringement on State Sovereignty was acceptable when considering the extreme circumstances, but those do not exist anymore and therefore the Federal government must relinquish back the State’s sovereignty.
Alito Brnovich Factors (Totality of the Circumstances Test)
- Size of burden imposed
- Degree to which rule departs from the standard practice in 1982
- Size of any disparities in a rule’s impact on different racial or ethnic groups
- Opportunities provided by the state’s entire voting system
- Strength of state interests versus the burden imposed.
Brnovich - Kagan Dissent
Justice Kagan makes an argument that “Open” – means equally open to each component and not the system as a whole… moreover, argues that state interests must be necessary interest. Kagan focuses on results and outcome.
Garcia v. San Antonio Metropolitan Transit Authority
Overturned the “integral/traditional” test as being unworkable. Instead of looking to what were traditional governmental functions, the Court would instead look to the political process for protection.
South Carolina v. Baker
The political process was not considered defective and SC was not denied participation, so the law was constitutional. If they’d been “singled out” it would have been defective. Implicates the political question doctrine; if the political process had broken down, Court may not have wanted to get involved anyway.
South Dakota v. Dole
Congress passed a bill allowing them to withhold some highway funding from states that didn’t pass a drinking age of 21. Basically a minimum drinking age law nationwide. Lays out test for limits on Congress’ use of the Spending Power.
DISSENT: O’Connor notes the law is both over and underinclusive. Too attenuated.
Spending Power Test (Dole Test)
Congress may condition the receipt of federal funds by states subject to the following 4 limitations:
- Spending power must be used for “general welfare”. Toothless standard.
- Conditions to receive funds must be unambiguous.
- Conditions to receive funds must be related to a federal interest in a particular national project or program.
- Conditions must not violate any other constitutional provisions such as the 10th Amendment
- HIDDEN FIFTH Can’t be too coercive so as to be commandeering. Not too coercive if it’s an incentive (see Dole). But it IS too coercive if it’s all or nothing (see NFIB).
NFIB v. Sebelius
The Medicaid penalty was deemed unconstitutional because it threatened to take away all Medicaid funds if the states didn’t comply. The difference between this and Dole is that there, it was a small encouragement/incentive of 5% of highway funding whereas here it’s a gun to the head with 100% of funds withdrawn.
Permitted Ways for Congress to Influence State Legislatures
- Generally applicable law (see Reno v. Condon)
- As part of its Spending Power, Congress may attach conditions on states’ receipt of federal funds (see South Dakota v. Dole)
- As part of its Commerce Power, Congress may offer the choice of regulating according to federal regulations or having state law preempted by federal regulations.
