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National League of Cities v. Usery - Significance, A Violation Of The Tenth Amendment, The Court Affirms, Dissent: The Tenth As A "truism"

act appellant labor justices

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.

Additional Topics

National League of Cities v. Usery - Further Readings

National League of Cities v. Usery - Significance

National League of Cities v. Usery - A Violation Of The Tenth Amendment

In 1938, during a tidal wave of legislative action associated with President Franklin 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 scale for overtime, which it defined as anything over 40 hours per week, as one and a half times t…

National League of Cities v. Usery - 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 of traditional government functions . . . they are not within the authority granted Congress by the Commerce Clause." Quoting from Fry v. United States (1975), Rehnquist we…

National League of Cities v. Usery - 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. He did not, he wr…

National League of Cities v. Usery - Impact

At the time, National League of Cities v. Usery seemed a harbinger of a 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 impos…

National League of Cities v. Usery - Related Cases

Nebraska Press Association v. Stuart - Significance, Related Cases, The "little Lindbergh Law" [next] [back] Murray R. Gold Trials: 1976-92 - A Former Son-in-law, A Dead Culprit?, Second Trial, … Waving In The Wind"

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about 2 years ago

Anna

Justice Rehnquist wrote the majority oppinion in the Usery case not Justice Burger