Garcia V. San Antonio mta - Overruled National League of Cities – Minimum wage

• Blackmun 1985. Facts. The issue here was whether the minimum-wage and overtime provisions of the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (same statute at issue in National League of Cities) should apply to employees of a municipally-owned and-operated mass-transit system. Under National League of Cities and cases later decided under it, the issue translated into the issue: Is municipal ownership and operation of such transit system a “traditional governmental function?”

• Holding. SCt held that state governments are not immune from generally applicable federal laws [key phrase]; thus, federal government cannot pass laws singling out state governments.

• Thus, this was yet another judicial abdication.

• Note this is analogous to argument in McCulloch v. Maryland that state government cannot single out federal government.

• Difficulty of line-drawing. Majority contended that the 8-year period following National League of Cities had shown that it was “difficult, if not impossible, to identify an organizing principle” that would distinguish between those functions that are “traditional governmental functions” and those that are not. For instance, federal courts of appeal had held that the licensing of automobile drivers was a “traditional government function” (as to which the 10th Amendment therefore protected state sovereignty from federal control), but that the regulation of traffic on public roads was not.

• Problem of subjectivity. An additional, but related problem was that the National League of Cities approach inevitably led to judicial subjectivity. “Any rule of state immunity that looks to the ‘traditional,’ ‘integral,’ or ‘necessary’ nature of governmental functions inevitably invites an unelected federal judiciary to make decisions about which state policies it favors and which ones it dislikes.

• Procedural safeguards. Yet, the majority insisted, its rejection of National League of Cities did not mean that there are no limitations upon the federal government’s right to use its delegated powers to impair state sovereignty. However, state sovereign interests are protected by “procedural safeguards inherent in the structure of the federal system,” not by “judicially created limitations on federal power.” [Wechsler-Choper argument]

• Examples of structural protection. For instance, the requirement that each state have two Senators, the fact that the states are given general control over electoral qualifications for federal elections, and the fact that the states have a special role in presidential elections by means of the electoral college, are all indications that the structure of the federal government has been constitutionally arranged so as to protect state sovereignty.

• Dissent. Four dissenters asserted that the majority approach “effectively reduces the 10^th Amendment to meaningless rhetoric when Congress acts pursuant to the Commerce Clause.”

• Dissent - Powell.

1. Contended that National League of Cities was correctly decided and that it articulated a workable standard. The Garcia majority’s approach, by contrast, established no effective standard at all, in Powell’s opinion. Powell was especially troubled by the fact that under the majority approach, “federal political officials, invoking the Commerce Clause, are the sole judges of the limits of their own power.” He contended that the majority position was inconsistent with the rule, in force since Marbury v. Madison, that it is up to the federal judiciary to “say what the law is” with respect to the constitutionality of congressional actions.

2. As during Founding Fathers’ era, democracy is more effective at state/local levels where officials are more accessible and responsive. Special interest groups significantly influence Congress with campaign contributions  such a “political process” that functions this way is unlikely to safeguard sovereign rights of States and localities. Staffs in Congress are hardly as accessible/responsive/mindful of local concerns as staffs in state and local government.

• Dissent - O’Connor.

1. Doubted whether structural or procedural factors would be enough to prevent Congress from trampling upon state sovereignty. She observed that a number of recent changes in how Congress works (e.g. the direct election of Senators, as well as the “expanded influence of national interest groups”) had probably “lessened the weight Congress gives to the legitimate interests of States as States.” This was all the more true in view of the “unprecedented growth of federal regulatory activity” in the last two decades. True essence of federalism is that states have legitimate interests which federal government must respect even though its laws are supreme. Thus, SCt cannot abdicate its constitutional responsibility to oversee federal government’s compliance with its duty to respect legitimate interests of states.

2. Not private litigant. O’Connor believed that the majority was holding “that the States as States retain no status apart from that which Congress chooses to let them retain.” The majority was analyzing the constitutionality of congressional regulation of the states pursuant to the Commerce power by asking only: would the same regulation be valid if enforced against a private party? O’Connor believed that it was wrong to equate a State with “any private litigant” for the purposes of this analysis.

• Koppelman. Does Blackmun or dissenting justices have better grasp of political reality?