Maryland v. Wirtz

Appellants
The states of Maryland, Texas, Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Massachusetts, Mississippi,Missouri, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Vermont, Virginia, Wyoming; and the Fort Worth [Texas] Independent School District
Appellee
W. Willard Wirtz, U.S. Secretary of Labor, et al.
Appellants' Claim
That the Court should enjoin [prevent] enforcement of the Fair Labor Standards Act as amended in 1966, which required states to meet federal standards forpaying minimum wage and overtime in their schools and hospitals.
Chief Lawyers for Appellants
Alan M. Wilner, Assistant Attorney General of Maryland; Charles Alan Wright
Chief Lawyer for Appellee
Erwin N. Griswold, U.S. Solicitor General
Justices for the Court
Hugo Lafayette Black, William J. Brennan, Jr., Abe Fortas, John Marshall Harlan II (writing for the Court), Earl Warren, Byron R. White (Thurgood Marshalldid not participate)
Justices Dissenting
William O. Douglas, Potter Stewart
Place
Washington, D.C.
Date of Decision
10 June 1968
Decision
That the Fair Labor Standards Act as amended did indeed apply to state schools and hospitals, and that states should obey the amended provisions and pay minimum wage and overtime.
Significance
Maryland v. Wirtz was an important step in the battle over the natureof federalism--the balance of power between the states and the federal government. This decision clearly established the sovereignty of the federal government, even if a federal ruling could be shown to have harmful effects on thestates' ability "to provide for the welfare or necessities of their inhabitants."
When the U.S. Constitution was first submitted to the 13 colonies for ratification, the colonies were concerned about maintaining the autonomy they had enjoyed before the Revolution. For this and other reasons, the states refused to ratify the Constitution until the Bill of Rights was added. The Tenth Amendment to the Constitution specifically addresses the question of states' rights:

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.

One of the most important rights that was delegated to the United States wasthe right to regulate interstate commerce. The so-called "Commerce Clause," Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution specifies that, "The congress shall have power . . . to regulate commerce . . . among the several States . . ." The tension between the states' rights to govern themselves and the federal government's right to regulate interstate commerce was at the heart of the conflict in Maryland v. Wirtz.
Minimum Wage and Overtime
To understand Maryland v. Wirtz, it is necessary to go back to 1938, when Congress first passed the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). In its capacity as regulator of interstate commerce, Congress was able to pass some of thefirst national labor legislation, specifying that any employee "engaged in commerce of in the production of goods for commerce" should receive a minimum wage and overtime pay.
In 1961, Congress widened the coverage of the FLSA. Now it concerned not onlythose employees directly engaged in interstate commerce, but all employees who worked at enterprises engaged in interstate commerce. In other words, if any part of the company you worked for had to do with interstate commerce, youwere entitled to federally set minimum wages and overtime pay, even if you personally had nothing to do with commerce between the states.
In 1966, Congress broadened the FLSA once again. Now it included hospitals, institutions, and schools, which were considered to be involved in interstatecommerce by virtue of the fact that they bought, used, and sometimes sold goods made in other states. Moreover, even if these hospitals, institutions, andschools were run by state governments, they were still covered by the FLSA.
Interstate Commerce and Labor Peace
The state of Maryland, soon joined by 27 other states and a school district,challenged this latest expansion of the national labor legislation. It claimed that state-run organizations were beyond Congress' power under the CommerceClause of the Constitution. They also claimed that the law ran counter to the Eleventh Amendment, which forbade the federal court system to rule on suitsbetween the citizens of two different states. Finally, it argued that even if the Constitution did allow the expanded legislation, schools and hospitalswere not engaged in interstate commerce and so should not be included in theact.
The Court ruled 6-2 in favor of Congress' right to pass the FLSA. It offeredthree major arguments:
(1) The Commerce Clause did indeed enable Congress to regulate the hours andwages of employees working for companies engaged in interstate business. First, it was clear that businesses with lower wages and no overtime enjoyed a competitive advantage over businesses with better wages and working conditions.Without federal legislation, interstate commerce would tend to flow in the direction of those states that paid the least. Therefore, if Congress evened out wages across the states, it was legitimately acting to regulate interstatecommerce.
(2) Furthermore, said the Court, Congress had found that "labor peace"--an absence of strikes and other labor disputes--could be better achieved by mandating certain basic standards for workers, such as minimum wages and overtime pay. Labor peace meant that interstate commerce would flow freely, without interruptions caused by strikes or other disturbances. Therefore, Congress couldpass minimum-wage legislation and overtime requirements as part of its efforts to regulate interstate commerce.
(3) Although federal and state interests might sometimes conflict, "the Statemay be forced to conform its activities to federal regulation" when engagingin "economic activities that are validly regulated by the Federal government."
The majority opinion in Maryland v. Wirtz caused great dismay among state governments, who claimed that they could not afford to pay the higher wages demanded by the new legislation. On the other hand, the decision was supported by the AFL-CIO and by the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), the public employees' union, both of whom had joined the federal government with "friend of the court" briefs.
Disrupting the Fiscal Policy of the States
The decision in Maryland v. Wirtz also provoked sharp dissent from twoSupreme Court justices, Douglas and Stewart. In his minority opinion, Justice Douglas raised the spectre of the federal government disrupting:

. . . the fiscal policy of the States . . . If constitutional principles offederalism raise no limits to the commerce power where regulation of state activities are concerned . . . could Congress compel the States to build superhighways crisscrossing their territory in order to accommodate interstate vehicles, to provide inns and eating places for interstate travelers, to quadruple their police forces in order to prevent commerce-crippling riots, etc.? Could the Congress virtually draw up each State's budget to avoid disruptive effect[s] . . . on commercial intercourse?

Federal Regulation vs. States' Rights
The decision in Maryland v. Wirtz was overturned after only eight years, in a decision called National League of Cities v. Usery (1976). Themajority in National League seemed to agree with the minority in Wirtz, finding that a state was not just another entity in the economy butwas a special, independent element that had been given a unique place in theConstitution. Thus in National League, the Court held that when federal and state interests collided, federal interests frequently had to give way.
But this decision was overruled again in Garcia v. San Antonio Metropolitan Transit Authority (1986). In Garcia, the Court appeared to go back to its original finding in Wirtz: that with rare exceptions, the Constitution had not given any kind of sacred power to the states.
Garcia built upon Wirtz, taking that decision one step further.In Garcia, the Court held that states' power lay not in any constitutional guarantees, but in the political process itself. The people of each state could elect men and women to Congress. These representatives would presumably refrain from taking any actions that might hurt the states who had elected them. This is the definition of federalism that still stands, despite critics' fears of a federal policy that might cause economic or other hardships tothe states.
Related Cases

• National League of Cities v. Usery, 426 U.S. 833 (1976).
  
• Garcia v. San Antonio Metropolitan Transit Authority, 469 U.S. 528(1985).