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GARCIA v. SAN ANTONIO METRO. TRANSIT
AUTH.
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Sunday, November 10, 2008 12:50 a.m.
469 U.S. 528 (1985)
Decided February 19, 1985
JUSTICE BLACKMUN delivered the opinion of the Court.
We revisit in these cases an issue raised in National League of
Cities v. Usery, 426 U.S. 833 (1976). In that litigation, this Court, by
a sharply divided vote, ruled that the Commerce Clause does not empower
Congress to enforce the minimum-wage and overtime provisions of the Fair
Labor Standards Act (FLSA) against the States "in areas of traditional
governmental functions." Although National League of Cities supplied
some examples of "traditional governmental functions," it did not offer
a general explanation of how a "traditional" function is to be
distinguished from a "nontraditional" one. Since then, federal and state
courts have struggled with the task, thus imposed, of identifying a
traditional function for purposes of state immunity under the Commerce
Clause.
In the present cases, a Federal District Court concluded that
municipal ownership and operation of a mass-transit system is a
traditional governmental function and thus, under National League of
Cities, is exempt from the obligations imposed by the FLSA. Faced with
the identical question, three Federal Courts of Appeals and one state
appellate court have reached the opposite conclusion.
Our examination of this "function" standard applied in these and
other cases over the last eight years now persuades us that the attempt
to draw the boundaries of state regulatory immunity in terms of
"traditional governmental function" is not only unworkable but is also
inconsistent with established principles of federalism and, indeed, with
those very federalism principles on which National League of Cities
purported to rest. That case, accordingly, is overruled....
I
The present controversy concerns the extent to which San
Antonio Mass Transit Authority (SAMTA) may be subjected to the
minimum-wage and overtime requirements of the FLSA. When the FLSA was
enacted in 1938, its wage and overtime provisions did not apply to local
mass-transit employees or, indeed, to employees of state and local
governments. In 1961, Congress extended minimum-wage coverage to
employees of any private mass-transit carrier whose annual gross revenue
was not less than $1 million. Five years later, Congress extended FLSA
coverage to state and local-government employees for the first time by
withdrawing the minimum-wage and overtime exemptions from public
hospitals, schools, and mass-transit carriers whose rates and services
were subject to state regulation. At the same time, Congress eliminated
the overtime exemption for all mass-transit employees other than
drivers, operators, and conductors....
Four months after National League of Cities was handed down, SATS
informed its employees that the decision relieved SATS of its overtime
obligations under the FLSA.
Matters rested there until September 17, 1979, when the Wage and Hour
Administration of the Department of Labor issued an opinion that SAMTA's
operations "are not constitutionally immune from the application of the
Fair Labor Standards Act" under National League of Cities. On November
21 of that year, SAMTA filed this action against the Secretary of Labor
in the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas.
It sought a declaratory judgment that, contrary to the Wage and Hour
Administration's determination, National League of Cities precluded the
application of the FLSA's overtime requirements to SAMTA's
operations....
II
Appellees have not argued that SAMTA is immune from regulation
under the FLSA on the ground that it is a local transit system engaged
in intrastate commercial activity. In a practical sense, SAMTA's
operations might well be characterized as "local." Nonetheless, it long
has been settled that Congress' authority under the Commerce Clause
extends to intrastate economic activities that affect interstate
commerce. Were SAMTA a privately owned and operated enterprise, it
could not credibly argue that Congress exceeded the bounds of its
Commerce Clause powers in prescribing minimum wages and overtime rates
for SAMTA's employees. Any constitutional exemption from the
requirements of the FLSA therefore must rest on SAMTA's status as a
governmental entity rather than on the "local" nature of its operations.
The prerequisites for governmental immunity under National League of
Cities were summarized by this Court in Hodel, supra. Under that
summary, four conditions must be satisfied before a state activity may
be deemed immune from a particular federal regulation under the Commerce
Clause. First, it is said that the federal statute at issue must
regulate "the `States as States.'" Second, the statute must "address
matters that are indisputably `attribute[s] of state sovereignty.'"
Third, state compliance with the federal obligation must "directly
impair [the States'] ability `to structure integral operations in areas
of traditional governmental functions.'" Finally, the relation of state
and federal interests must not be such that "the nature of the federal
interest . . . justifies state submission."
The controversy in the present cases has focused on the third Hodel
requirement - that the challenged federal statute trench on "traditional
governmental functions." The District Court voiced a common concern:
"Despite the abundance of adjectives, identifying which particular state
functions are immune remains difficult." Just how troublesome the task
has been is revealed by the results reached in other federal cases.
Thus, courts have held that regulating ambulance services, licensing
automobile drivers, operating a municipal airport, performing solid
waste disposal, and operating a highway authority, are functions
protected under National League of Cities. At the same time, courts have
held that issuance of industrial development bonds, regulation of
intrastate natural gas sales, regulation of traffic on public roads,
regulation of air transportation, operation of a telephone system,
leasing and sale of natural gas, operation of a mental health facility,
and provision of in-house domestic services for the aged and handicapped
are not entitled to immunity. We find it difficult, if not impossible,
to identify an organizing principle that places each of the cases in the
first group on one side of a line and each of the cases in the second
group on the other side. The constitutional distinction between
licensing drivers and regulating traffic, for example, or between
operating a highway authority and operating a mental health facility, is
elusive at best.
Thus far, this Court itself has made little headway in defining the
scope of the governmental functions deemed protected under National
League of Cities. In that case the Court set forth examples of protected
and unprotected functions, but provided no explanation of how those
examples were identified. The only other case in which the Court has had
occasion to address the problem is Long Island. We there observed: "The
determination of whether a federal law impairs a state's authority with
respect to `areas of traditional [state] functions' may at times be a
difficult one." The accuracy of that statement is demonstrated by this
Court's own difficulties in Long Island is developing a workable
standard for "traditional governmental functions." We relied in large
part there on "the historical reality that the operation of railroads is
not among the functions traditionally performed by state and local
governments," but we simultaneously disavowed "a static historical view
of state functions generally immune from federal regulation." We held
that the inquiry into a particular function's "traditional" nature was
merely a means of determining whether the federal statute at issue
unduly handicaps "basic state prerogatives," but we did not offer an
explanation of what makes one state function a "basic prerogative" and
another function not basic. Finally, having disclaimed a rigid reliance
on the historical pedigree of state involvement in a particular area, we
nonetheless found it appropriate to emphasize the extended historical
record of federal involvement in the field of rail transportation....
We believe, however, that there is a more fundamental problem at work
here, a problem that explains why an attempt to draw distinctions with
respect to federal regulatory authority under National League of Cities
is unlikely to succeed regardless of how the distinctions are phrased.
The problem is that neither the governmental/proprietary distinction nor
any other that purports to separate out important governmental functions
can be faithful to the role of federalism in a democratic society. The
essence of our federal system is that within the realm of authority left
open to them under the Constitution, the States must be equally free to
engage in any activity that their citizens choose for the common weal,
no matter how unorthodox or unnecessary anyone else - including the
judiciary - deems state involvement to be. 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. "The science of government . . . is the science of
experiment," and the States cannot serve as laboratories for social and
economic experiment, if they must pay an added price when they meet the
changing needs of their citizenry by taking up functions that an earlier
day and a different society left in private hands....
We therefore now reject, as unsound in principle and unworkable in
practice, a rule of state immunity from federal regulation that turns on
a judicial appraisal of whether a particular governmental function is
"integral" or "traditional." Any such rule leads to inconsistent results
at the same time that it disserves principles of democratic
self-governance, and it breeds inconsistency precisely because it is
divorced from those principles. If there are to be limits on the Federal
Government's power to interfere with state functions - as undoubtedly
there are - we must look elsewhere to find them. We accordingly return
to the underlying issue that confronted this Court in National League of
Cities - the manner in which the Constitution insulates States from the
reach of Congress' power under the Commerce Clause.
III
The central theme of National League of Cities was that the
States occupy a special position in our constitutional system and that
the scope of Congress' authority under the Commerce Clause must reflect
that position. Of course, the Commerce Clause by its specific language
does not provide any special limitation on Congress' actions with
respect to the States. It is equally true, however, that the text of the
Constitution provides the beginning rather than the final answer to
every inquiry into questions of federalism, for "[b]ehind the words of
the constitutional provisions are postulates which limit and control."
National League of Cities reflected the general conviction that the
Constitution precludes "the National Government [from] devour[ing] the
essentials of state sovereignty." In order to be faithful to the
underlying federal premises of the Constitution, courts must look for
the "postulates which limit and control."
What has proved problematic is not the perception that the
Constitution's federal structure imposes limitations on the Commerce
Clause, but rather the nature and content of those limitations. One
approach to defining the limits on Congress' authority to regulate the
States under the Commerce Clause is to identify certain underlying
elements of political sovereignty that are deemed essential to the
States'"separate and independent existence." This approach obviously
underlay the Court's use of the "traditional governmental function"
concept in National League of Cities....
We doubt that courts ultimately can identify principled
constitutional limitations on the scope of Congress' Commerce Clause
powers over the States merely by relying on a priori definitions of
state sovereignty. In part, this is because of the elusiveness of
objective criteria for "fundamental" elements of state sovereignty, a
problem we have witnessed in the search for "traditional governmental
functions." There is, however, a more fundamental reason: the
sovereignty of the States is limited by the Constitution itself. A
variety of sovereign powers, for example, are withdrawn from the States
by Article I, 10. Section 8 of the same Article works an equally sharp
contraction of state sovereignty by authorizing Congress to exercise a
wide range of legislative powers and (in conjunction with the Supremacy
Clause of Article VI) to displace contrary state legislation. By
providing for final review of questions of federal law in this Court,
Article III curtails the sovereign power of the States' judiciaries to
make authoritative determinations of law. Finally, the developed
application, through the Fourteenth Amendment, of the greater part of
the Bill of Rights to the States limits the sovereign authority that
States otherwise would possess to legislate with respect to their
citizens and to conduct their own affairs.
The States unquestionably do "retai[n] a significant measure of
sovereign authority." They do so, however, only to the extent that the
Constitution has not divested them of their original powers and
transferred those powers to the Federal Government. In the words of
James Madison to the Members of the First Congress: "Interference with
the power of the States was no constitutional criterion of the power of
Congress. If the power was not given, Congress could not exercise it; if
given, they might exercise it, although it should interfere with the
laws, or even the Constitution of the States."
The power of the Federal Government is a "power to be respected" as
well, and the fact that the States remain sovereign as to all powers not
vested in Congress or denied them by the Constitution offers no guidance
about where the frontier between state and federal power lies. In short,
we have no license to employ freestanding conceptions of state
sovereignty when measuring congressional authority under the Commerce
Clause.
When we look for the States'"residuary and inviolable sovereignty,"
in the shape of the constitutional scheme rather than in predetermined
notions of sovereign power, a different measure of state sovereignty
emerges. Apart from the limitation on federal authority inherent in the
delegated nature of Congress' Article I powers, the principal means
chosen by the Framers to ensure the role of the States in the federal
system lies in the structure of the Federal Government itself. It is no
novelty to observe that the composition of the Federal Government was
designed in large part to protect the States from overreaching by
Congress. The Framers thus gave the States a role in the selection both
of the Executive and the Legislative Branches of the Federal Government.
The States were vested with indirect influence over the House of
Representatives and the Presidency by their control of electoral
qualifications and their role in Presidential elections. U.S. Const.,
Art. I, 2, and Art. II, 1. They were given more direct influence in the
Senate, where each State received equal representation and each Senator
was to be selected by the legislature of his State. Art. I, 3. The
significance attached to the States' equal representation in the Senate
is underscored by the prohibition of any constitutional amendment
divesting a State of equal representation without the State's consent.
Art. V....
We are convinced that the fundamental limitation that the
constitutional scheme imposes on the Commerce Clause to protect the
"States as States" is one of process rather than one of result. Any
substantive restraint on the exercise of Commerce Clause powers must
find its justification in the procedural nature of this basic
limitation, and it must be tailored to compensate for possible failings
in the national political process rather than to dictate a "sacred
province of state autonomy."
Insofar as the present cases are concerned, then, we need go no
further than to state that we perceive nothing in the overtime and
minimum-wage requirements of the FLSA, as applied to SAMTA, that is
destructive of state sovereignty or violative of any constitutional
provision....
IV
Of course, we continue to recognize that the States occupy a
special and specific position in our constitutional system and that the
scope of Congress' authority under the Commerce Clause must reflect that
position. But the principal and basic limit on the federal commerce
power is that inherent in all congressional action - the built-in
restraints that our system provides through state participation in
federal governmental action. The political process ensures that laws
that unduly burden the States will not be promulgated. In the factual
setting of these cases the internal safeguards of the political process
have performed as intended....
Though the separate concurrence providing the fifth vote in National
League of Cities was "not untroubled by certain possible implications"
of the decision, the Court in that case attempted to articulate
affirmative limits on the Commerce Clause power in terms of core
governmental functions and fundamental attributes of state sovereignty.
But the model of democratic decisionmaking the Court there identified
underestimated, in our view, the solicitude of the national political
process for the continued vitality of the States. Attempts by other
courts since then to draw guidance from this model have proved it both
impracticable and doctrinally barren. In sum, in National League of
Cities the Court tried to repair what did not need repair.
We do not lightly overrule recent precedent. We have not hesitated,
however, when it has become apparent that a prior decision has departed
from a proper understanding of congressional power under the Commerce
Clause. Due respect for the reach of congressional power within the
federal system mandates that we do so now.
National League of Cities v. Usery (1976), is overruled...
JUSTICE POWELL, with whom THE CHIEF JUSTICE, JUSTICE REHNQUIST,
and JUSTICE O'CONNOR join, dissenting.
The Court today, in its 5-4 decision, overrules National League of
Cities v. Usery, a case in which we held that Congress lacked authority
to impose the requirements of the Fair Labor Standards Act on state and
local governments. Because I believe this decision substantially alters
the federal system embodied in the Constitution, I dissent.
I
There are, of course, numerous examples over the history of
this Court in which prior decisions have been reconsidered and
overruled. There have been few cases, however, in which the principle of
stare decisis and the rationale of recent decisions were ignored as
abruptly as we now witness....
Although the doctrine is not rigidly applied to constitutional
questions, "any departure from the doctrine of stare decisis demands
special justification." In the present cases, the five Justices who
compose the majority today participated in National League of Cities and
the cases reaffirming it. The stability of judicial decision, and with
it respect for the authority of this Court, are not served by the
precipitate overruling of multiple precedents that we witness in these
cases....
Whatever effect the Court's decision may have in weakening the
application of stare decisis, it is likely to be less
important than what the Court has done to the Constitution
itself. A unique feature of the United States is the federal system of
government guaranteed by the Constitution and implicit in the very name
of our country. Despite some genuflecting in the Court's opinion to the
concept of federalism, today's decision effectively reduces the Tenth
Amendment to meaningless rhetoric when Congress acts pursuant to the
Commerce Clause.....
Today's opinion does not explain how the States' role in the
electoral process guarantees that particular exercises of the Commerce
Clause power will not infringe on residual state sovereignty. Members of
Congress are elected from the various States, but once in office they
are Members of the Federal Government. Although the States participate
in the Electoral College, this is hardly a reason to view the President
as a representative of the States' interest against federal
encroachment. We noted recently "[t]he hydraulic pressure inherent
within each of the separate Branches to exceed the outer limits of its
power . . . ." The Court offers no reason to think that this pressure
will not operate when Congress seeks to invoke its powers under the
Commerce Clause, notwithstanding the electoral role of the States....
III
A
In our federal system, the States have a major role that cannot
be pre-empted by the National Government. As contemporaneous writings
and the debates at the ratifying conventions make clear, the States'
ratification of the Constitution was predicated on this understanding of
federalism. Indeed, the Tenth Amendment was adopted specifically to
ensure that the important role promised the States by the proponents of
the Constitution was realized.
Much of the initial opposition to the Constitution was rooted in the
fear that the National Government would be too powerful and eventually
would eliminate the States as viable political entities. This concern
was voiced repeatedly until proponents of the Constitution made
assurances that a Bill of Rights, including a provision explicitly
reserving powers in the States, would be among the first business of the
new Congress. Samuel Adams argued, for example, that if the several
States were to be joined in "one entire Nation, under one Legislature,
the Powers of which shall extend to every Subject of Legislation, and
its Laws be supreme & controul the whole, the Idea of Sovereignty in
these States must be lost." Likewise, George Mason feared that "the
general government being paramount to, and in every respect more
powerful than the state governments, the latter must give way to the
former."
Antifederalists raised these concerns in almost every state ratifying
convention. So strong was the concern that the proposed Constitution was
seriously defective without a specific bill of rights, including a
provision reserving powers to the States, that in order to secure the
votes for ratification, the Federalists eventually conceded that such
provisions were necessary. Accordingly, the 10 Amendments that we know
as the Bill of Rights were proposed and adopted early in the first
session of the First Congress.
This history, which the Court simply ignores, documents the integral
role of the Tenth Amendment in our constitutional theory. It exposes as
well, I believe, the fundamental character of the Court's error today.
Far from being "unsound in principle," judicial enforcement of the
Tenth Amendment is essential to maintaining the federal system so
carefully designed by the Framers and adopted in the Constitution....
The Court today propounds a view of federalism that pays only
lipservice to the role of the States. Although it says that the States
"unquestionably do `retai[n] a significant measure of sovereign
authority,'" it fails to recognize the broad, yet specific areas of
sovereignty that the Framers intended the States to retain. Indeed, the
Court barely acknowledges that the Tenth Amendment exists. That
Amendment states explicitly that "[t]he powers not delegated to the
United States . . . are reserved to the States." The Court recasts this
language to say that the States retain their sovereign powers "only to
the extent that the Constitution has not divested them of their original
powers and transferred those powers to the Federal Government." This
rephrasing is not a distinction without a difference; rather, it
reflects the Court's unprecedented view that Congress is free under the
Commerce Clause to assume a State's traditional sovereign power, and to
do so without judicial review of its action. Indeed, the Court's view of
federalism appears to relegate the States to precisely the trivial role
that opponents of the Constitution feared they would occupy....
As I view the Court's decision today as rejecting the basic precepts
of our federal system and limiting the constitutional role of judicial
review, I dissent.
NJLawman.com
Police and
Law Enforcement News
Sunday, November 10, 2008 12:50 a.m.
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