Appellant
National League of Cities, et al.
Appellee
W. J. Usery Jr., U.S. Secretary of Labor
Appellant's Claim
That 1974 congressional amendments to the Fair Labor Standards Act, placing state governments under the authority of minimum wage and maximum hour provisions in the act, constituted a violation of the Tenth Amendment.
Chief Lawyer for Appellant
Charles S. Rhyne
Chief Lawyer for Appellee
Robert Bork, U.S. Solicitor General
Justices for the Court
Harry A. Blackmun, Warren E. Burger, Lewis F. Powell, Jr., William H. Rehnquist (writing for the Court), Potter Stewart
Justices Dissenting
William J. Brennan, Jr., Thurgood Marshall, John Paul Stevens, Byron R. White
Place
Washington, D.C.
Date of Decision
24 June 1976
Decision
That congressional use of the Fair Labor Standards Act to regulate the states' employment policy was unconstitutional because it violated the Tenth Amendment, which reserves for the states all power not delegated to the federal government.
Significance
Although numerous Supreme Court decisions have spawned new interpretations ofwell-known constitutional amendments such as the First, Fifth, or Fourteenth, National League of Cities v. Usery was one of the Court's few casesdealing with the Tenth Amendment. The Court's decision in Usery seemeda harbinger of increased authority for state legislatures against the powersof the federal government. Usery was also the first decision in some40 years to restrict the power of the federal government over interstate commerce, a power which had increased significantly under the "New Deal" of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930s.
A Violation of the Tenth Amendment
In 1938, during a tidal wave of legislative action associated with PresidentFranklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). The FLSA established minimum-wage provisions, requiring employers to pay their workers a certain hourly figure. Likewise, it set the wage scalefor overtime, which it defined as anything over 40 hours per week, as one anda half times the regular hourly rate. The Court would later identify the purpose behind the latter provision: to provide a disincentive for employers tokeep any one employee on the job more than 40 hours a week. Like much of thelegislation arising from those years, the FLSA expanded the power of the federal government over business and industry; as for state, county, and municipal governments, however, the act explicitly excluded these entities from its purview.
Starting in 1961, Congress began to amend the act, extending its provisions to include employees in the public as well as the private sector. In 1966, employees of state hospitals, institutions, and schools were placed under the act, and the Supreme Court recognized the constitutionality of these and the 1961 provisions in its 1968 Maryland v. Wirtz ruling. Then in 1974, Congress further amended the act, defining "employer" in such a way that the termwould include "a public agency," a designation identified as "the Governmentof the United States, the government of a State or political subdivision thereof . . . " Thus the wage and hour provisions of the FLSA were extended to include virtually all employees working for states or their political subdivisions.
To state and local governments, and to organizations such as the National League of Cities, the amendment to the FLSA seemed to be a violation of the Tenth Amendment. The latter, the last of the Bill of Rights passed in 1791, states simply that "the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited to it by the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." Together with the National Governor's Conference andvarious city and state governments, the National League brought a legal action in the District Court for the District of Columbia. The named respondent was President Gerald R. Ford's Secretary of Labor, W. J. Usery, Jr., who wouldlater enjoy recognition as the chief negotiator between the owners and the players' union in the 1994 Major League Baseball strike.
In their suit, the appellants asked for declaratory and injunctive relief against the application of the amendments to them. But a three-judge panel ruledin favor of the secretary of labor, and granted his motion to dismiss the complaint due to the appellants' inability to state a claim on which relief might be granted. The district court in its ruling did, however, state that it was "troubled" by the appellants' claims that the amended FLSA would impede their ability to carry on essential government functions, a subject that wouldlater catch the attention of Justice Rehnquist for the Supreme Court. The district court judged these contentions "substantial," and observed that "it maywell be that the Supreme Court will feel it appropriate to draw back from the far-reaching implications" of its ruling in Maryland v. Wirtz. "Butthat is a decision," the lower court held, "that only the Supreme Court can make . . . "
So the case came before the Court, designated as California v. Usery.The case was argued twice, first on 16 April 1975, and nearly a year later, on 2 March 1976. The appellants on the briefs in the original argument were officials representing the states of Arizona (Bruce Babbitt, future U.S. Senator and later Secretary of the Interior under the Clinton administration), Delaware, Indiana, Iowa, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana,Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire (future U.S. Senator Warren Rudman), Oklahoma, Oregon, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, and Wyoming. On behalfof the appellants, the states of Virginia and New York filed briefs of amici curiae urging reversal, as did the National Association of Counties, the National Institute of Municipal Law Officers, and the Public Service Research Council. On the other side, briefs urging affirmance were filed by officials representing the states of Alabama, Colorado, Michigan, and Minnesota, aswell as the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL/CIO), the Coalition of American Public Employees, the International Conference of Police Associations, and the Florida Police Benevolent Association.
The Court Affirms
The Court ruled 5-4 for the appellants. Writing for the majority, Justice Burger held that "insofar as the 1974 amendments operate directly to displace the States' abilities to structure employer-employee relationships in areas oftraditional government functions . . . they are not within the authority granted Congress by the Commerce Clause." Quoting from Fry v. United States (1975), Rehnquist went on to say that " . . . Congress has sought to wieldpower in a fashion that would impair the States' `ability to function effectively in a federal system'." Therefore, "Congress may not exercise its power to regulate commerce so as to force directly upon the States its choices as tohow essential decisions regarding the conduct of integral governmental functions are to be made."
Thus, in upholding Fry, the Court overruled Wirtz. To explain the steps whereby the Court had reached this decision, Rehnquist began by elucidating the commerce powers granted to Congress under Article I of the Constitution, which he called "a grant of plenary authority." Quoting Chief JusticeJohn Marshall in Gibbons v. Ogden (1824), Rehnquist referred to Congress's authority as "the power to regulate; that is, to prescribe the rule bywhich commerce is to be governed." In Fry, the Court had made it clearthat "wholly private" activity could be governed: "[e]ven activity that is purely intrastate in character may be regulated by Congress, where the activity . . . affects commerce among the States or with foreign nations." Thus thecommerce powers of Congress were unquestionably broad, a fact which the appellants did not dispute. "Their contention, on the contrary," the Court stated,"is that when Congress seeks to regulate directly the activities of States as public employers, it transgresses an affirmative limitation on the exerciseof its power akin to other commerce power affirmative limitations containedin the Constitution."
The Court, Rehnquist wrote, "has never doubted that there are limits upon thepower of Congress to override state sovereignty." Likewise the appellees had"agreed that our federal system of government imposes definite limits on theauthority of Congress to regulate the activities of the States." Indeed, asRehnquist went on to show, there was a venerable tradition of respect for thebounds of congressional commerce power over the states, and in this vein theCourt cited Justice Harlan Fiske Stone's plurality ruling in New York v.United States,, wherein the Court held that Congress could not impose taxes on the states.
At the close of its examination of congressional commerce power as compared with that of the states, the Court noted the appellee's argument that "the cases in which this Court has upheld sweeping exercises of authority by Congress. . . have already curtailed the sovereignty of the States quite as much asthe 1974 amendments to the Fair Labor Standards Act." The Court did not agreewith this contention: "it is one thing to recognize the authority of Congress to enact laws regulating individual businesses," but "it is quite another to uphold a similar exercise of congressional authority directed, not to private citizens, but to the States as States." There was a line which Congress could not cross, "not because Congress may lack an affirmative grant of legislative authority" in a given matter, "but because the Constitution prohibits itfrom exercising the authority in that manner."
The Court next addressed the issue of the increased costs the states would undergo in complying with the provisions of the amendments. These issues, as the Court indicated, were "not critical to our decision of the case." Nonetheless, it was noted that a number of governments feared the consequences of their inability--due to the drain on their finances imposed by the new wage requirements--to deliver "traditional services" such as fire and police protection. Likewise, affirmative-action programs were threatened by the heightened demands on state and local treasuries. The Court referred to fire and police protection, sanitation, public health, and parks and recreation as "functions .. . which governments are created to provide." Thus, if Congress could impairsuch functions, "we think there would be little left of the States' `separate and independent existence.'"
Finally, the Court addressed the appellee's contention that a ruling in favorof the appellants would be inconsistent with Fry, in which the Courthad upheld the use of the Economic Stabilization Act of 1970 to impose a temporary freeze on the wages of state and local government employees. The difference, the Court indicated, was that Fry involved emergency measures, and "the limits imposed upon the commerce power when Congress seeks to apply it to the States are not so inflexible as to preclude temporary enactments tailored to combat a national emergency." As for Wirtz, which "relied heavily" on a broad definition of commerce powers in United States v. California (1936), the Court overruled its earlier judgment.
Dissent: The Tenth as a "Truism"
Justice Blackmun concurred with the Court, though he expressed reservations:"I am not untroubled," he wrote, "by certain possible implications of the Court's opinion . . . but it seems to me that it adopts a balancing approach, and does not outlaw federal power in areas such as environmental protection, where the federal interest is demonstrably greater" than that of the states. Hedid not, he wrote, "read the opinion so despairingly as does my Brother Brennan."
The latter offered a sharp dissent, in which Justices Marshall and White joined. Using much of the same material that the Court had cited in its ruling, Brennan found quite a different interpretation. He cited Justice John Marshall, including the latter's opinion in Gibbons, as opposing attempts to curtail Congress's commerce power. Just as the Court had found a lengthy tradition of respect for state authority, Brennan found the same history of honorfor the power of Congress.
To Brennan, the meaning of the Tenth Amendment with regard to state commercepower was much less profound than it was to the rest of the Court. "My Brethren do not successfully obscure today's patent usurpation of the role reservedfor the political process," he wrote, "by their purported discovery in the Constitution of a restraint derived from sovereignty of the States on Congress' exercise of the commerce power." He cited the Court's observation in United States v. Darby that "the amendment states but a truism that all is retained which has not been surrendered." In this view, the amendment was notsaying anything of great import. Rather, it was simply indicating, to make ananalogy, that the portion of the glass that is not full is empty--all powersnot delegated are reserved.
Brennan concluded by disagreeing with the Court's holding on nearly every item cited, including Fry, Wirtz, and the financial burdens imposed on the states under the FLSA. Given the fact that the 1977 budget recommended the disbursement of $60.5 billion in federal assistance to the states, thelargest estimate of cost submitted by the appellants--$1 billion--"pales incomparison." In conclusion, Brennan wrote that "We are left with a catastrophic judicial body blow at Congress' power under the Commerce Clause." There was in this, he held, "an ominous portent of disruption of our constitutional structure."
Justice Stevens also offered a dissenting opinion, though his disagreement was much less dramatic. He thought it was wrong to say that "the Federal Government may not interfere with a sovereign State's inherent right to pay a substandard wage to the janitor at the state capitol" when it could impose all manner of other requirements on the state and the janitor, including "[forbidding] him from burning too much soft coal in the capitol furnace, from dumping untreated refuse in an adjacent waterway . . . or from driving either [his] truck or the Governor's limousine over 55 miles an hour." This did not mean hedisagreed with the basic viewpoint of the appellants, he indicated, but "my disagreement with the wisdom of this legislation may not . . . affect my judgment with respect to its validity."
Impact
At the time, National League of Cities v. Usery seemed a harbinger ofa new era of federalism on the part of the Court. There may have been a rising tide of sentiment in favor of state governments, but the decision itself only stood for nine years. In 1985, the Court heard the case of Garcia v. San Antonio Metropolitan Transit Authority, which again involved the commerce power of Congress to impose a minimum wage law on a city. The Court upheldthe commerce power, thus overturning its ruling in Usery. This time Brennan was in the majority, along with fellow Usery dissenters Marshall, Stevens, and White. Blackmun, who had earlier indicated reservations aboutthe Usery decision, proved to be the swing vote. The dissenting minority was composed of the remaining members of the Usery majority, alongwith Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who had replaced Justice Stewart. But thefinal decision had not yet been made with regard to the Tenth Amendment: in New York v. United States (1992), the Court again ruled in favor of a state against Congress, finding that a federal mandate involving hazardous waste disposal constituted a violation of congressional power. In the case, O'Connor cited Wirtz, Usery and other rulings as indication of theCourt's "unsteady path" with regard to Tenth Amendment issues.
Related Cases
National League of Cities, et al.
Appellee
W. J. Usery Jr., U.S. Secretary of Labor
Appellant's Claim
That 1974 congressional amendments to the Fair Labor Standards Act, placing state governments under the authority of minimum wage and maximum hour provisions in the act, constituted a violation of the Tenth Amendment.
Chief Lawyer for Appellant
Charles S. Rhyne
Chief Lawyer for Appellee
Robert Bork, U.S. Solicitor General
Justices for the Court
Harry A. Blackmun, Warren E. Burger, Lewis F. Powell, Jr., William H. Rehnquist (writing for the Court), Potter Stewart
Justices Dissenting
William J. Brennan, Jr., Thurgood Marshall, John Paul Stevens, Byron R. White
Place
Washington, D.C.
Date of Decision
24 June 1976
Decision
That congressional use of the Fair Labor Standards Act to regulate the states' employment policy was unconstitutional because it violated the Tenth Amendment, which reserves for the states all power not delegated to the federal government.
Significance
Although numerous Supreme Court decisions have spawned new interpretations ofwell-known constitutional amendments such as the First, Fifth, or Fourteenth, National League of Cities v. Usery was one of the Court's few casesdealing with the Tenth Amendment. The Court's decision in Usery seemeda harbinger of increased authority for state legislatures against the powersof the federal government. Usery was also the first decision in some40 years to restrict the power of the federal government over interstate commerce, a power which had increased significantly under the "New Deal" of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930s.
A Violation of the Tenth Amendment
In 1938, during a tidal wave of legislative action associated with PresidentFranklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). The FLSA established minimum-wage provisions, requiring employers to pay their workers a certain hourly figure. Likewise, it set the wage scalefor overtime, which it defined as anything over 40 hours per week, as one anda half times the regular hourly rate. The Court would later identify the purpose behind the latter provision: to provide a disincentive for employers tokeep any one employee on the job more than 40 hours a week. Like much of thelegislation arising from those years, the FLSA expanded the power of the federal government over business and industry; as for state, county, and municipal governments, however, the act explicitly excluded these entities from its purview.
Starting in 1961, Congress began to amend the act, extending its provisions to include employees in the public as well as the private sector. In 1966, employees of state hospitals, institutions, and schools were placed under the act, and the Supreme Court recognized the constitutionality of these and the 1961 provisions in its 1968 Maryland v. Wirtz ruling. Then in 1974, Congress further amended the act, defining "employer" in such a way that the termwould include "a public agency," a designation identified as "the Governmentof the United States, the government of a State or political subdivision thereof . . . " Thus the wage and hour provisions of the FLSA were extended to include virtually all employees working for states or their political subdivisions.
To state and local governments, and to organizations such as the National League of Cities, the amendment to the FLSA seemed to be a violation of the Tenth Amendment. The latter, the last of the Bill of Rights passed in 1791, states simply that "the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited to it by the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." Together with the National Governor's Conference andvarious city and state governments, the National League brought a legal action in the District Court for the District of Columbia. The named respondent was President Gerald R. Ford's Secretary of Labor, W. J. Usery, Jr., who wouldlater enjoy recognition as the chief negotiator between the owners and the players' union in the 1994 Major League Baseball strike.
In their suit, the appellants asked for declaratory and injunctive relief against the application of the amendments to them. But a three-judge panel ruledin favor of the secretary of labor, and granted his motion to dismiss the complaint due to the appellants' inability to state a claim on which relief might be granted. The district court in its ruling did, however, state that it was "troubled" by the appellants' claims that the amended FLSA would impede their ability to carry on essential government functions, a subject that wouldlater catch the attention of Justice Rehnquist for the Supreme Court. The district court judged these contentions "substantial," and observed that "it maywell be that the Supreme Court will feel it appropriate to draw back from the far-reaching implications" of its ruling in Maryland v. Wirtz. "Butthat is a decision," the lower court held, "that only the Supreme Court can make . . . "
So the case came before the Court, designated as California v. Usery.The case was argued twice, first on 16 April 1975, and nearly a year later, on 2 March 1976. The appellants on the briefs in the original argument were officials representing the states of Arizona (Bruce Babbitt, future U.S. Senator and later Secretary of the Interior under the Clinton administration), Delaware, Indiana, Iowa, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana,Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire (future U.S. Senator Warren Rudman), Oklahoma, Oregon, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, and Wyoming. On behalfof the appellants, the states of Virginia and New York filed briefs of amici curiae urging reversal, as did the National Association of Counties, the National Institute of Municipal Law Officers, and the Public Service Research Council. On the other side, briefs urging affirmance were filed by officials representing the states of Alabama, Colorado, Michigan, and Minnesota, aswell as the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL/CIO), the Coalition of American Public Employees, the International Conference of Police Associations, and the Florida Police Benevolent Association.
The Court Affirms
The Court ruled 5-4 for the appellants. Writing for the majority, Justice Burger held that "insofar as the 1974 amendments operate directly to displace the States' abilities to structure employer-employee relationships in areas oftraditional government functions . . . they are not within the authority granted Congress by the Commerce Clause." Quoting from Fry v. United States (1975), Rehnquist went on to say that " . . . Congress has sought to wieldpower in a fashion that would impair the States' `ability to function effectively in a federal system'." Therefore, "Congress may not exercise its power to regulate commerce so as to force directly upon the States its choices as tohow essential decisions regarding the conduct of integral governmental functions are to be made."
Thus, in upholding Fry, the Court overruled Wirtz. To explain the steps whereby the Court had reached this decision, Rehnquist began by elucidating the commerce powers granted to Congress under Article I of the Constitution, which he called "a grant of plenary authority." Quoting Chief JusticeJohn Marshall in Gibbons v. Ogden (1824), Rehnquist referred to Congress's authority as "the power to regulate; that is, to prescribe the rule bywhich commerce is to be governed." In Fry, the Court had made it clearthat "wholly private" activity could be governed: "[e]ven activity that is purely intrastate in character may be regulated by Congress, where the activity . . . affects commerce among the States or with foreign nations." Thus thecommerce powers of Congress were unquestionably broad, a fact which the appellants did not dispute. "Their contention, on the contrary," the Court stated,"is that when Congress seeks to regulate directly the activities of States as public employers, it transgresses an affirmative limitation on the exerciseof its power akin to other commerce power affirmative limitations containedin the Constitution."
The Court, Rehnquist wrote, "has never doubted that there are limits upon thepower of Congress to override state sovereignty." Likewise the appellees had"agreed that our federal system of government imposes definite limits on theauthority of Congress to regulate the activities of the States." Indeed, asRehnquist went on to show, there was a venerable tradition of respect for thebounds of congressional commerce power over the states, and in this vein theCourt cited Justice Harlan Fiske Stone's plurality ruling in New York v.United States,, wherein the Court held that Congress could not impose taxes on the states.
At the close of its examination of congressional commerce power as compared with that of the states, the Court noted the appellee's argument that "the cases in which this Court has upheld sweeping exercises of authority by Congress. . . have already curtailed the sovereignty of the States quite as much asthe 1974 amendments to the Fair Labor Standards Act." The Court did not agreewith this contention: "it is one thing to recognize the authority of Congress to enact laws regulating individual businesses," but "it is quite another to uphold a similar exercise of congressional authority directed, not to private citizens, but to the States as States." There was a line which Congress could not cross, "not because Congress may lack an affirmative grant of legislative authority" in a given matter, "but because the Constitution prohibits itfrom exercising the authority in that manner."
The Court next addressed the issue of the increased costs the states would undergo in complying with the provisions of the amendments. These issues, as the Court indicated, were "not critical to our decision of the case." Nonetheless, it was noted that a number of governments feared the consequences of their inability--due to the drain on their finances imposed by the new wage requirements--to deliver "traditional services" such as fire and police protection. Likewise, affirmative-action programs were threatened by the heightened demands on state and local treasuries. The Court referred to fire and police protection, sanitation, public health, and parks and recreation as "functions .. . which governments are created to provide." Thus, if Congress could impairsuch functions, "we think there would be little left of the States' `separate and independent existence.'"
Finally, the Court addressed the appellee's contention that a ruling in favorof the appellants would be inconsistent with Fry, in which the Courthad upheld the use of the Economic Stabilization Act of 1970 to impose a temporary freeze on the wages of state and local government employees. The difference, the Court indicated, was that Fry involved emergency measures, and "the limits imposed upon the commerce power when Congress seeks to apply it to the States are not so inflexible as to preclude temporary enactments tailored to combat a national emergency." As for Wirtz, which "relied heavily" on a broad definition of commerce powers in United States v. California (1936), the Court overruled its earlier judgment.
Dissent: The Tenth as a "Truism"
Justice Blackmun concurred with the Court, though he expressed reservations:"I am not untroubled," he wrote, "by certain possible implications of the Court's opinion . . . but it seems to me that it adopts a balancing approach, and does not outlaw federal power in areas such as environmental protection, where the federal interest is demonstrably greater" than that of the states. Hedid not, he wrote, "read the opinion so despairingly as does my Brother Brennan."
The latter offered a sharp dissent, in which Justices Marshall and White joined. Using much of the same material that the Court had cited in its ruling, Brennan found quite a different interpretation. He cited Justice John Marshall, including the latter's opinion in Gibbons, as opposing attempts to curtail Congress's commerce power. Just as the Court had found a lengthy tradition of respect for state authority, Brennan found the same history of honorfor the power of Congress.
To Brennan, the meaning of the Tenth Amendment with regard to state commercepower was much less profound than it was to the rest of the Court. "My Brethren do not successfully obscure today's patent usurpation of the role reservedfor the political process," he wrote, "by their purported discovery in the Constitution of a restraint derived from sovereignty of the States on Congress' exercise of the commerce power." He cited the Court's observation in United States v. Darby that "the amendment states but a truism that all is retained which has not been surrendered." In this view, the amendment was notsaying anything of great import. Rather, it was simply indicating, to make ananalogy, that the portion of the glass that is not full is empty--all powersnot delegated are reserved.
Brennan concluded by disagreeing with the Court's holding on nearly every item cited, including Fry, Wirtz, and the financial burdens imposed on the states under the FLSA. Given the fact that the 1977 budget recommended the disbursement of $60.5 billion in federal assistance to the states, thelargest estimate of cost submitted by the appellants--$1 billion--"pales incomparison." In conclusion, Brennan wrote that "We are left with a catastrophic judicial body blow at Congress' power under the Commerce Clause." There was in this, he held, "an ominous portent of disruption of our constitutional structure."
Justice Stevens also offered a dissenting opinion, though his disagreement was much less dramatic. He thought it was wrong to say that "the Federal Government may not interfere with a sovereign State's inherent right to pay a substandard wage to the janitor at the state capitol" when it could impose all manner of other requirements on the state and the janitor, including "[forbidding] him from burning too much soft coal in the capitol furnace, from dumping untreated refuse in an adjacent waterway . . . or from driving either [his] truck or the Governor's limousine over 55 miles an hour." This did not mean hedisagreed with the basic viewpoint of the appellants, he indicated, but "my disagreement with the wisdom of this legislation may not . . . affect my judgment with respect to its validity."
Impact
At the time, National League of Cities v. Usery seemed a harbinger ofa new era of federalism on the part of the Court. There may have been a rising tide of sentiment in favor of state governments, but the decision itself only stood for nine years. In 1985, the Court heard the case of Garcia v. San Antonio Metropolitan Transit Authority, which again involved the commerce power of Congress to impose a minimum wage law on a city. The Court upheldthe commerce power, thus overturning its ruling in Usery. This time Brennan was in the majority, along with fellow Usery dissenters Marshall, Stevens, and White. Blackmun, who had earlier indicated reservations aboutthe Usery decision, proved to be the swing vote. The dissenting minority was composed of the remaining members of the Usery majority, alongwith Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who had replaced Justice Stewart. But thefinal decision had not yet been made with regard to the Tenth Amendment: in New York v. United States (1992), the Court again ruled in favor of a state against Congress, finding that a federal mandate involving hazardous waste disposal constituted a violation of congressional power. In the case, O'Connor cited Wirtz, Usery and other rulings as indication of theCourt's "unsteady path" with regard to Tenth Amendment issues.
Related Cases
- Gibbons v. Ogden, 22 U.S. 1 (1824).
- United States v. California, 297 U.S. 175 (1936).
- United States v. Darby, 312 U.S. 100, 124 (1941).
- Maryland v. Wirtz, 392 U.S. 183 (1968).
- Fry v. United States, 421 U.S. 542 547 (1975).
- Reeves, Inc. v. Stake, 447 U.S. 429 (1980).
- Garcia v. San Antonio Metropolitan Transit Authority, 469 U.S. 528(1985).
- New York v. United States, 505 U.S. 144 (1992).
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