NEW YORK v. UNITED STATES 505 U.S. 144 (1992)

in garcia v. san antonio metropolitan transit authority (1985), the Supreme Court seemed to reject a strong judicial role in protecting states from congressional regulatory authority. But in New York v. United States and Printz v. United States (1997), the Court renewed its earlier commitment to protecting state autonomy. Together, New York and Printz hold that Congress may not commandeer state or local legislative or executive officials to formulate or administer a federal regulatory program that otherwise falls within the Article I authority of Congress. These decisions leave Congress with ample authority to encourage states to implement federal policies, but limited authority to coerce them to do so.

inNew York, the Court invalidated the "take title" provision of the Low-Level Radioactive Waste Policy Amendments Act of 1985. This provision required each state by 1996 either to regulate, in congressionally acceptable ways, the disposal of publicly or privately generated radioactive waste, or to take title to the waste and hence assume liability for it. The Court offered two main arguments for its conclusion. The first concerned original intent : In replacing the articles of confederation with the Constitution, claimed the Court, the Framers intended to replace an ineffectual regime in which Congress could regulate only the states and not individual citizens, with the conceptually opposite regime in which Congress could regulate only individual citizens but not states. The Court also professed a concern for maintaining clear lines of political accountability, and claimed that commandeering might lead citizens within a state erroneously to ascribe responsibility for unpopular policy decisions to "puppet" state officials rather than the actual federal decisionmakers behind the scenes.

Printz involved a challenge to provisions of the federal Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act that required state law enforcement officers to expend a "reasonable effort" to conduct background checks as part of a federal handgun control policy. Defending the statute, the United States argued that New York was distinguishable because the Brady Act coerced only the administration of federally defined law, rather than state legislative lawmaking in pursuance of general federal objectives. By compelling only relatively ministerial activities, asserted the United States, the act neither interfered with the state's sovereign law-making capacity and autonomy, nor did it realistically threaten to muddle political accountability. But the Court rejected these efforts to distinguish New York, making clear that Congress cannot commandeer state executive officials any more than legislative ones, by imposing ministerial burdens any more than regulatory ones. The Court replied that the principle of state autonomy inherent in the notion of "dual sovereignty" is undermined whenever Congress targets states for the imposition of affirmative regulatory or executory duties.

The doctrinal rule emerging from New York and Printz—Congress may not conscript state officials to do its bidding—may seem intuitively appropriate as an interpretation of dual sovereignty, and has the further merit of establishing a bright line capable of easy judicial enforcement. The Court's reasoning in these decisions has been criticized, however, for its overly formalist quality. While the Court invoked commonplace clichés about how state autonomy may frustrate federal tyranny, the Court failed to consider carefully how an anticommandeering rule serves the values underlying our federalist regime. Moreover, the Court's formalist structural and historical arguments purporting to deduce an anticommandeering rule from abstract notions of dual sovereignty seem somewhat forced, belying any suggestion that the rehnquist court is less "activist" as defined by aggressive review of democratically enacted statutes than either the warren court or burger court.

bothNew York 's and Printz 's practical impact on federal–state relations may be quite limited. First, the cases leave open the possibility that Congress may still commandeer state administrative resources pursuant to a few specific grants of power, including the power of Congress under the fourteenth amendment, section 5 to enforce that amendment's rights against the states. Second, the cases affirmed the authority of Congress to encourage states to enact and enforce regulations designed to achieve federal goals through either of two noncoercive means. Congress may condition federal subsidies on the willingness of states to administer federally desired programs, and Congress may threaten to preempt state programs unless they conform to federal standards. As Congress has employed these noncoercive tools far more frequently than coercive ones, New York and Printz may have greater symbolic than practical import for our regime of federalism.

Evan H. Caminker
(2000)

(see also: Dual Federalism; López, United States v.; Sovereignty; State Immunity from Federal Law.)

Bibliography

Caminker, Evan H. 1995 State Sovereignty and Subordinacy: May Congress Commandeer State Officers to Implement Federal Law? Columbia Law Review 95:1001–1089.

——1997 Printz, State Sovereignty, and the Limits of Formalism. The Supreme Court Review 1997:199–248.

Prakash, Saikrishna B. 1993 Field Office Federalism. Virginia Law Review 79:1957–2037.

Powell, H. Jefferson 1993 The Oldest Question of Constitutional Law. Virginia Law Review 79:633–689.