The Lopez Standards

Taxing Power

The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes. . . .

Art. I, § 8, cl. 1

Spending Power

The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the . . . general Welfare of the United States. . . . (Art. I, § 8, cl. 1)

Spending Power

Must be exercised in pursuit of the general welfare (deferring to Congress on question whether a general purpose is served).

Any conditions on the receipt of funds must be unambiguous.

Conditions on federal grants must be related to the purposes of the grants (but need not be reasonably close relation)

Congress cannot coerce states into compliance with its conditions.

Enforcing the Reconstruction Amendments

The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article (14th Amendment, § 5).

The Lopez Standards

Congress may regulate the uses of channels of interstate commerce, including protecting commerce from immoral or injurious uses.
Congress can regulate and protect the instrumentalities of interstate commerce, as well as persons or things in interstate commerce.
Congress can regulate those (? commercial) activities substantially affecting interstate commerce (in the aggregate).

10th Amendment

The Powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

South Carolina v. Baker

"States must find their protection from congressional regulation through the national political process, not through judicially defined spheres of unregulatable state activity."

(p.236)

New York v. United States

"Congress may not simply ‘commandeer the legislative processes of the States by directly compelling them to enact and enforce a federal regulatory program.'" (p.239)

New York v. United States

Generally applicable statutes
Financial incentives to regulate in a certain way (the spending power)
When regulating private activity, Congress can give states the choice of regulating according to federal standards or having the federal government preempt state regulation.

New York v. United States

"No matter how powerful the federal interest involved, the Constitution simply does not give Congress the authority to require the States to regulate" (p.244)

Supremacy Clause

This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof . . . shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby. . . .

Article VI, cl. 2

Art. I, § 10, cl. 3

No State shall , without the Consent of Congress, . . . enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State. . . .

Federalist 27

[T]he laws of the Confederacy will become the SUPREME LAW of the land . . . [and] the legislatures, courts, and magistrates, of the [states] will be incorporated into the operations of the federal government . . . and will be rendered auxiliary to the enforcement of its laws.