426 U.S. 833 (1976), argued 16 Apr. 1975, reargued 2 Mar. 1976, decided 24 June 1976 by vote of 5 to 4; Rehnquist for the Court, Blackmun concurring, Brennan, White, Marshall, and Stevens in dissent. National League of Cities struck down a 1974 federal statute that extended the maximum hours and minimum wage provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act to most state and municipal employees. That the maximum hours and minimum wage provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act were constitutional as applied to the employees of private corporations was a matter of settled law. However, the Court, seemingly breathing new life into the Tenth Amendment, held that as applied to the “states as states,” the provisions were an unconstitutional interference with an essential “attribute of sovereignty attaching to every state government” (p. 845), and thus violated the Tenth Amendment.
The significance of National League of Cities lay not so much in the actual impact of the decision itself, but in its symbolic blow in favor of federalism. By invoking the Tenth Amendment as a serious barrier to federal power, the Court revived a provision that had been dormant since the New Deal. The Court struck down the statute in question not because Congress lacked the affirmative power to pass it—the regulation clearly fell under Congress's power to regulate interstate and foreign commerce—but because the act violated “traditional aspects of state sovereignty” and “impermissibly interfere[d] with the integral governmental functions” of the states (pp. 849, 851). For the first time since the New Deal, the Supreme Court had struck down a federal law on the grounds that Congress had transgressed the permissible boundaries of federalism.
National League of Cities did not challenge Congress's power to regulate private corporations or individuals involved in interstate commerce or in activities that had a substantial effect on interstate commerce. The decision affected only those cases in which the states themselves—that is, the state governments or their political subdivisions—were so engaged. The Court held that “the States as States stand on a quite different footing from an individual or a corporation when challenging the exercise of Congress'[s] power to regulate commerce” (p. 833). In so holding, the Court overruled Maryland v. Wirtz (1968) but left intact the long line of decisions granting broad congressional powers to regulate interstate and foreign commerce.
National League of Cities left unclear exactly where to draw the line between permissible and impermissible federal intrusions on the states. Justice William Rehnquist's formulation of the test varied from “functions essential to separate and independent existence” to “traditional aspects of state sovereignty” to “integral governmental functions” and “traditional operations of state and local governments.” As examples of traditional or integral governmental functions the Court listed fire prevention, police protection, sanitation, public health, and parks and recreation. Since National League of Cities itself involved a general challenge to the sweeping provisions of the 1974 act, specific determinations of what constituted a traditional governmental function were left to later cases involving more specific congressional actions.
In a brief concurrence, Justice Harry Blackmun suggested that the opinion of the Court adopted “a balancing approach, and does not outlaw federal power in areas such as environmental protection, where the federal interest is demonstrably greater and where state facility compliance with imposed federal standards would be essential” (p. 856).
Four justices dissented. Justice William Brennan pointed out the Court's longstanding deference to congressional regulation in the commerce area and cited its previous holdings that “the sovereign power of the states is necessarily diminished to the extent of the grants of power to the federal government in the Constitution” (p. 859). Brennan accused the majority of creating an “ill‐conceived abstraction … as a transparent cover for invalidating a congressional judgment with which they disagree” (p. 867), and of violating the principles of judicial restraint and deference to the political branches (see Judicial Self‐Restraint). He called the majority's “essential‐function” test “conceptually unworkable” and meaningless. The Court's decision, he concluded, “was a catastrophic judicial body blow at Congress'[s] power under the Commerce Clause” (p. 832).
National League of Cities had a brief lifespan. After a decade of drawing fine distinctions between state functions that were or were not “essential” or “traditional,” the Court gave up. In Garcia v. San Antonio Metropolitan Transit Authority (1985), it overruled National League of Cities by the same 5‐to‐4 vote, with Blackmun—who had indicated in National League of Cities that he was “not untroubled by certain possible implications of the Court's opinion” (p. 865)—switching his vote (O'Connor voted the same way as Stewart, whom she had replaced in 1981).
See also Commerce Power; Federalism; State Sovereignty and States' Rights.
— William Lasser
