The not so United States: on many of today's hottest issues, the states are ignoring Washington and going their own way. Is this what the Founding Fathers had in mind?

• Author: Belluck, Pam
• Position: NATIONAL

If you're paid the minimum wage at your part-time job, you might want to flip burgers or stock shelves in Washington State, which has enacted the highest minimum wage in the country, $7.63 an hour. Are you itching to help fight global warming? Then think about moving to California, where lawmakers are considering the toughest greenhouse-gas curbs in the nation. Do you believe in evolution? If so, you may want to steer clear of Kansas, which wants its public high schools to teach the subject with skepticism.

Politicians, especially in Washington, often speak about "the American people" as if they were of one voice on matters of concern to the nation. While that ideal has never truly reflected reality, it may be even less true today as states increasingly strike out on their own on a wide range of issues, from health care to gay marriage, from stem-cell research to the environment.

In doing so, the states are, in effect, challenging the federal government to go along with them, try to stop them, or just get out of their way.

TAKING THE LEAD

Here are some recent actions taken by various states:

* 17 STATES & THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA have adopted higher minimum wages than the federal minimum of $5.15 an hour, which critics say is too low. (See chart, p. 14, and Debate, p. 27.) Washington State tops the list, with Oregon ($7.50) and Connecticut ($7.40) not far behind. The federal minimum was last raised by Congress in 1997.

* CALIFORNIA, NEW JERSEY, MARYLAND, CONNECTICUT ILLINOIS have allocated state funds for stem-cell research, which many scientists believe could lead to new methods for fighting degenerative diseases like Parkinson's. President Bush has tightly limited federal funding in this area; in July he vetoed a bill that would have increased such funding, citing moral concerns about the use of discarded embryos, from which scientists extract stem cells.

* OHIO, TEXAS & 17 OTHER STATES have amended their state constitutions to ban same-sex marriage, while a federal constitutional amendment failed to win congressional approval this summer. (Massachusetts is the only state that currently permits same-sex marriage, as a result of a State Supreme Court ruling in 2004.)

* THE CALIFORNIA LEGISLATURE is considering a bill that would make the state the first to impose limits on the emissions of all greenhouse gases. The Bush administration has often argued that such limits would stunt the growth of the nation's economy.

* SOUTH DAKOTA enacted a law in March that bans all abortions except those necessary to save the life of the mother. Supporters of the law said it was meant as a challenge to Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion in the U.S.

FEDERALISM & THE...