New York v. United States 505 U.S. 144 (1992)

• Author: Evan H. Caminker
• Pages: 1803-1804

Page 1803

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.

In New 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...