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Amendment X (the Tenth Amendment) of the United States Constitution, which is part of the Bill of Rights, was ratified on December 15, 1791.
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The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved for the States respectively, or to the people. |
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[edit] Summary
The Amendment, which makes explicit the idea that the federal government is limited only to the powers it is granted in the Constitution, is generally recognized to be a truism. In United States v. Sprague (1931) the Supreme Court noted that the amendment "added nothing to the [Constitution] as originally ratified". From time to time states and local governments have attempted to assert exemption from various federal regulations, especially in the areas of labor and environmental controls, using the Tenth Amendment as a basis for their claim.
Another oft-repeated quote, from United States v. Darby, 312 U.S. 100, 124 (1941), states:
- The amendment states but a truism that all is retained which has not been surrendered. There is nothing in the history of its adoption to suggest that it was more than declaratory of the relationship between the national and state governments as it had been established by the Constitution before the amendment or that its purpose was other than to allay fears that the new national government might seek to exercise powers not granted, and that the states might not be able to exercise fully their reserved powers."
[edit] History and case law
[edit] Commerce clause
The Tenth Amendment is sometimes cited as constitutional ground denying Congress the right to pass any law it sees fit. However, Congress has cited its authority under the Commerce Clause for the authority to pass laws in realms of human behavior not mentioned in the Constitution. If a particular activity affects interstate commerce in any way, they have argued, that Congress has the authority to regulate that activity.
Many expansions of federal power enacted during the first phase of the New Deal in the 1930s were struck down by the Supreme Court, until President Franklin Delano Roosevelt tried to increase the number of judges on the Court to fifteen (the court packing scheme), and fill it with sympathetic judges. Although this was unsuccessful, in what was called "the switch in time that saved nine," the Court shifted from a narrow interpretation of the Commerce Clause, and broadened Congress's authority on activities that impact interstate commerce.
In the 1942 case Wickard v. Filburn, the Court ruled that federal crop price controls reached the wheat grown on a rural farm to be fed to the owners and their farm animals. The rationale was that a farmer's growing "his own wheat" is "commerce" because if he had not grown and consumed it, he would have had to buy it from someone. Hence, in the aggregate, if farmers were allowed to consume their own wheat it would affect the interstate market in wheat.
Since the New Deal, opponents of "big government" have claimed that federalism — the sharing of sovereignty between the federal and state governments — is mostly dead, and that the federal government has become the universal governmental power, against the wishes of the Framers of the Constitution.
In the 1985 case of Garcia v. San Antonio Metropolitan Transit Authority, the Court announced that it would no longer regard Tenth Amendment questions as justiciable, holding "[t]he political process ensures that laws that unduly burden the States will not be promulgated" by Congress.
In United States v. Lopez, 514 U.S. 549 (1995), a federal law mandating a "gun-free zone" on and around public school campuses was struck down because there was no clause in the Constitution authorizing it. This was the first modern Supreme Court opinion to limit the government's power under the Commerce Clause. The opinion did not mention the Tenth Amendment, and the Court's 1985 Garcia opinion remains the controlling authority on that subject.
Most recently, the Commerce Clause was cited in the 2005 decision Gonzales v. Raich. In this case, a Californian woman sued the Drug Enforcement Administration after her medical marijuana crop was seized and destroyed by Federal agents. Medical marijuana was explicitly made legal under California state law by Proposition 215; however, marijuana is prohibited at the federal level by the Controlled Substances Act. Even though the woman grew the marijuana strictly for her own consumption, and never sold any, the Supreme Court stated that growing one's own marijuana affects the interstate market of marijuana, citing the Wickard v. Filburn decision. It therefore ruled that this practice may be regulated by the Federal Government under the penumbra of the Commerce Clause.
[edit] Federal funding
Another controversial technique Congress has used has been to deny states federal funding if certain state laws do not conform to federal guidelines. For example, the national 55 mph (89 km/h) speed limit and the national 21-year drinking age were imposed through this method; the states would lose highway funding if they refused to pass such laws. See e.g. South Dakota v. Dole, 483 U.S. 203 (1987). The government, having the power to tax but not the power under the constitution to force states to pass speed limits or citizens to give details of their economic life (such as in income tax deductions), achieved its desired end by taxing and not returning a portion of what had been taxed unless the states and individuals "voluntarily" complied, for a return of what was taken from them by the power of taxing.
[edit] Forced Participation
In 1992, in the case New York v. United States 505 U.S. 144 (1992), for the only the second time in 55 years, the Court invalidated a portion of a federal law for violating the Tenth Amendment. The case challenged a portion of the 1985 Low-Level Radioactive Waste Policy Amendments Act. The act provided three incentives for the States to comply with statutory obligations to provide for the disposal of low-level radioactive waste. The first two incentives were monetary. The third, which was challenged in the case, obliged the States to take title to any waste within their borders that was not disposed of prior to January 1, 1996. Further, each States would be liable for all damages directly related to that waste. The Court, in a 6-3 decision, ruled that the obligation imposed by the Act violated the Tenth Amendment. Justice O’Connor wrote that the Government can encourage the States to adopt certain regulations through the Spending Power (i.e., by attaching conditions to the receipt of federal funds, see South Dakota v. Dole), or through the Commerce power (by directly pre-empting State law). However, Congress cannot directly compel the States to enforce federal regulations. In 1997, the Court again ruled that a federal act, this time the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, violated the Tenth Amendment (Printz v. United States, 521 U.S. 898 (1997). The act required state and local law enforcement officials to conduct background checks on persons attempting to purchase handguns. Justice Scalia, writing for the majority, applied New York v. United States to show that the law violated the Tenth Amendment. Since the act “forced participation of the State’s executive in the actual administration of a federal program,” it was unconstitutional.
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