What kind of laws is congress prohibited from passing

Writing for the majority, Justice Breyer held that whichever enumerated power justified the prisoner's crime of conviction also permitted Congress "to provide appropriately for those imprisoned, and to maintain the security of those who are not imprisoned but who may be affected by the federal imprisonment of others," including through post-sentence civil commitment. Air Force, was convicted by a court martial of a sex crime in ; he served a three-month sentence and received a bad conduct discharge.

Regulation of the land and naval Forces. Though Comstock and Kebodeaux embrace a broad understanding of the Necessary and Proper Clause, Congress's powers under this provision are not unlimited. For example, as discussed above with respect to the Commerce Clause, a majority of the Supreme Court has concluded that federal laws forbidding gun possession near schools, creating a civil remedy for victims of gender-motivated violence, and compelling the purchase of health insurance are not necessary and proper to the exercise of Congress's power to regulate interstate commerce.

Many of the reported cases address various as-applied challenges to SORNA; the courts of appeals have repeatedly rejected such challenges, even when the defendant "neither served in the military, nor committed an offense or lived on federal property, nor moved within interstate or foreign commerce. In addition to the "internal" limitations on Congress's powers discussed above, the Supreme Court has recognized a variety of federalism doctrines that affirmatively prohibit Congress from taking certain actions even if Congress would otherwise be authorized to act pursuant to one of its enumerated powers.

This section of the report accordingly discusses these "external" limitations on Congress's authority. First, the report discusses the "anti-commandeering" doctrine, before addressing the limitations on Congress's authority under the Spending Clause. The "anti-commandeering" doctrine generally prohibits the federal government from requiring states and localities to adopt or enforce federal policies. The anti-commandeering doctrine has its origins in the Court's decision in New York v.

United States , which struck down a provision of a federal statute that required states to either 1 regulate low-level radioactive waste generated within their borders according to the instructions of Congress, or 2 take title to and possession of such waste. The Court again applied the anti-commandeering doctrine five years later in Printz v. United States. Nevertheless, the Supreme Court has explained that the anti-commandeering doctrine recognized in New York and Printz has important limits.

First, the Court has explained that the doctrine "does not apply when Congress evenhandedly regulates an activity in which both States and private actors engage.

Condon , where it rejected a Tenth Amendment challenge to a federal law that restricted the states' ability to disclose personal information contained in the records of their motor vehicle departments DMVs.

Second, the anti-commandeering doctrine does not prohibit Congress from requiring state courts to enforce federal causes of action. Third, the Supreme Court has "long recognized" that Congress can displace or "preempt" otherwise valid but conflicting state laws under the Constitution's Supremacy Clause so long as it does so pursuant to its enumerated powers.

In , the Court considered the relationship between "commandeering" and preemption in Murphy v. While the anti-commandeering doctrine prohibits Congress from requiring states and localities to adopt or enforce federal policies, Congress retains the power to encourage states and localities to adopt or enforce federal policies by paying them to do so pursuant to its Spending Clause authority. As discussed above, the Court has held that based on the language of the Spending Clause, Congress's exercise of its Spending Power "must be in pursuit of 'the general welfare.

First, the Court has held that if Congress intends to place conditions on the receipt of federal funds by states, it "must do so unambiguously," thereby "enabl[ing] the States to exercise their choice knowingly, cognizant of the consequences of their participation. Halderman , where it rejected the argument that states receiving federal funds under the Developmentally Disabled Assistance and Bill of Rights Act were required to abide by the statute's "bill of rights" for the developmentally disabled as a condition of accepting the funds.

One commentator has observed that lower courts have applied the "clear notice" requirement to conditional spending schemes "with great frequency. Virginia , for example, the Fourth Circuit rejected the argument that the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of RLUIPA fails to provide "clear notice" that recipients of federal prison funds are required to abide by the statute's protections of religious liberty. Second, the Supreme Court's cases have also "suggested without significant elaboration that conditions on federal grants might be illegitimate if they are unrelated to the federal interest in particular national projects or programs.

While the Court acknowledged the "relatedness" limitation on Congress's Spending Clause authority in Dole , it has yet to overturn Spending Clause legislation on "relatedness" grounds. Third, the Supreme Court has explained that constitutional provisions other than the Spending Clause "may provide an independent bar to the conditional grant of federal funds.

Finally, the Supreme Court has explained that just as Congress may not require states to adopt or enforce federal policy under the anti-commandeering doctrine, Congress may not attach conditions to the receipt of federal funding when "the financial inducement" offered by such funding is "so coercive as to pass the point at which pressure turns into compulsion.

In the years following Dole , lower courts applying that decision rejected a number of "coerciveness" challenges to statutes attaching conditions to the receipt of federal funds. Lower courts are still working through the implications of the Court's "anti-coercion" decision in NFIB. In Mississippi Commission on Environmental Quality v.

EPA , for instance, the D. Circuit rejected a "coerciveness" challenge to a provision in the Clean Air Act CAA allowing the Environmental Protection Agency EPA to prohibit the approval of federal funding for state transportation projects in areas that failed to attain compliance with national air quality standards. Circuit's decision is "not likely to be the final word on the constitutionality of the CAA sanctions," as another CAA provision allows the EPA to withhold federal highway funding more broadly than the provision at issue in Mississippi Commission and may accordingly present a closer constitutional question.

Some litigants and commentators have also argued that the anti-coercion doctrine should not be limited to cases where the federal government offers financial inducements to states and localities. EPA , for instance, a coalition of 24 states offered an argument of this sort in challenging an EPA rule setting standards for carbon dioxide emissions from certain power plants, colloquially known as the "Clean Power Plan" CPP.

In February , the Supreme Court stayed the implementation of the CPP, potentially suggesting that a majority of the Court had concerns about its legality.

The Eleventh Amendment thereby implicates federalism by limiting the federal government's ability to regulate the states and thereby restricting Congress's authority to enact statutes that subject states to suit. Louisiana , the Supreme Court affirmed the principle that states generally enjoy immunity from private suits arising under federal statutory or constitutional law. The Court has interpreted the Eleventh Amendment against the broader background principle, inherent in the Constitution's structure, that the states, as separate and independent sovereigns, enjoy immunity from suit.

Because "the Eleventh Amendment is but one particular exemplification of" the broader principle of state sovereign immunity, the Supreme Court "has repeatedly held that the sovereign immunity enjoyed by the States extends beyond the literal text of the Eleventh Amendment.

That is not to say, however, that states are categorically immune from suit. Even though courts have interpreted the Eleventh Amendment more broadly than its language would suggest in some ways, in other respects courts have interpreted the Eleventh Amendment more narrowly than its text would suggest.

In other words, even though the Eleventh Amendment categorically states that the federal judicial power "shall not be construed to extend to any suit. First, the Supreme Court has recognized "that a State's sovereign immunity is 'a personal privilege which it may waive at pleasure. Second, in limited contexts, Congress may directly abrogate the states' Eleventh Amendment immunity by statute. Thus, Congress may not "abrogate the States' constitutionally secured immunity from suit in federal court" unless it has made its intention to do so "unmistakably clear in the language of the statute.

In other words, "even when the Constitution vests in Congress complete lawmaking authority over a particular area, the Eleventh Amendment" nevertheless generally "prevents congressional authorization of suits by private parties against unconsenting States. Finally, notwithstanding the Eleventh Amendment, federal courts may generally adjudicate lawsuits against individual state officers in their official capacity so long as the plaintiff seeks only prospective injunctive or declaratory relief to remedy continuing violations of federal statutory or constitutional law, as opposed to monetary damages.

Constitution or a federal statute "is 'stripped of his official or representative character'" for Eleventh Amendment purposes. Holder , where the Court invoked the equal sovereignty doctrine to strike down a portion of the Voting Rights Act.

The text of the Constitution expressly mandates equal treatment of states in only a few discrete provisions. Nonetheless, the Court has, at times, recognized an implied principle requiring some measure of equal treatment since the 19th Century, especially with respect to the terms governing the admission of new states. Hagan , which concerned the limits Congress could place over the sovereignty of the newly admitted State of Alabama, the Court held that Alabama was admitted into the union "on an equal footing with the original states.

Smith , the Court invalidated a provision in the act of Congress admitting the State of Oklahoma, requiring the capital of the State to "temporarily be at the city of Guthrie and. One v. Holder and Shelby County v. Section 4 of the VRA created a "coverage formula" identifying jurisdictions with a history of voter discrimination, and Section 5 required those jurisdictions to obtain prior approval or "preclearance" from the Department of Justice or a federal court for any change in voting procedures by proving that the change had neither "the purpose [nor] the effect of denying or abridging the right to vote on account of race or color.

The Court first considered the constitutionality of this arrangement in the case South Carolina v. Katzenbach , and though the Court recognized that preclearance was an "uncommon exercise of congressional power," the Court held that "exceptional conditions" in the form of states "contriving new rules of various kinds for the sole purpose of perpetuating voting discrimination" justified the procedure.

The plaintiffs in Northwest Austin and Shelby County argued that because racial discrimination in voting had become less prevalent since , there was no longer a constitutionally sufficient basis for treating certain states less favorably than others along the same dimensions that existed more than thirty years earlier.

Since Shelby County , only a handful of federal courts have considered equal sovereignty challenges outside of the voting rights context, and none has struck down a federal statute or action on those grounds. For example, in the case of NCAA v. In Mayhew v. Burwell , the First Circuit also considered the equal sovereignty doctrine's application outside the VRA context. Marbury v. Madison, 5 U. See U. X "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution.

See Federalism , Black's Law Dictionary 10th ed. See, e. Lopez, U. See also infra " Commerce Clause. United States, U. See also infra " The "Anti-Commandeering" Doctrine. See Christopher P. Blakeman, The U. One commentator has suggested that there may also exist a third category of limitations on Congress's powers: "process limits," wherein requirements such as "the bicameral legislature, the requirement of presidential presentment, and frequent democratic elections" constrain the process—but not the substantive outcome—of congressional action.

See Laurence H. Tribe, American Constitutional Law 3d ed. See , e. Dewitt, 76 U. But this express grant of power to regulate commerce among the States has always been understood as limited by its terms. Comstock, U. Maryland, 17 U. Roe, U. Primus, supra note 14 , at "External limits, in contrast, are affirmative prohibitions that prevent Congress from doing things that would otherwise be permissible exercises of its powers. Thus, the Fifteenth Amendment prevents Congress from conducting whites-only elections in the District of Columbia, despite Congress's power to govern the District.

See David J. See Chemerinsky, supra note 27 , at describing the shifting views on the Court concerning federalism. Congress's power to tax may be limited by other provisions of the Constitution that are not directly related to principles of federalism.

See United States v. Kahriger, U. Congress cannot tax exports, and it must impose direct taxes by the rule of apportionment, and indirect taxes by the rule of uniformity. Alexander Hamilton, Report on Manufacturers Dec. The Butler Court, while embracing a broad view of the spending power, struck down the challenged law the Agricultural Adjustment Act of on Tenth Amendment grounds, concluding that permitting Congress to regulate state police powers indirectly through the Spending Clause would undesirably allow Congress to "become the instrument for total subversion of the governmental powers reserved to the individual states.

The following year, however, the Court reversed course on Butler 's Tenth Amendment holding, concluding that Congress, when properly exercising its broad power under the Spending Clause, could apply that power to matters that the states historically controlled. See Helvering v. Davis, U. See Helvering , U. See also John C. Spending had to be for the 'general,' or national welfare, not for regional or local welfare. Indeed, in Buckley v. Valeo , the Court went so far as to describe the view that the General Welfare Clause serves as a limitation on congressional power as being "erroneous[]," noting that the concept of general welfare is a "a grant of power, the scope of which is quite expansive.

South Dakota v. Dole, U. Nat'l Fed'n of Indep. Sebelius, U. Pol'y , "Th[e] authority to regulate interstate commerce. See Hammer v. Dagenhart, U. Darby, U. See Boudreaux, supra note 65 , at "Th[e] authority to regulate interstate commerce.

United States v. Glover, F. See Stephen R. Morrison, U. See also Pierce Cty. Guillen, U. See Mitchell v. Zachry Co. See also S.

See Patton , F. Lopez , U. See Gonzales v. Raich, U. Such a law cannot be sustained under a clause authorizing Congress to 'regulate Commerce. In so viewing the individual mandate, Chief Justice Roberts rejected the argument that there is no distinction between activity and inactivity for purposes of determining whether an individual is having a substantial effect on interstate commerce, as the commerce power concerns the power to regulate classes of activities, not individuals.

Filburn, U. We have said that Congress can anticipate the effects on commerce of an economic activity. But we have never permitted Congress to anticipate that activity itself to regulate individuals not currently engaged in commerce.

See id. Because the Constitution permits such a tax, it is not our role to forbid it, or to pass upon its wisdom or fairness. Robbins, F. Henry, F. McLean, F. App'x 81, 3d Cir. App'x 50, 53 3d Cir. This report periodically references decisions by federal appellate courts of various regional circuits. For purposes of brevity, references to a particular circuit in the body of this report e. Court of Appeals for that particular circuit.

For other unsuccessful challenges to 18 U. Bron, F. App'x , 11th Cir. Alcantar, F. In addition, the Second Circuit noted that SORNA was properly applied to the defendant in Robbins , as the registration requirement "Robbins himself failed to meet was triggered by activity: his change of residence and travel across state lines. App'x at ; United States v. Sullivan, F. White, F. Howell, F. App'x , 7th Cir. Anderson, F. Another federal statute that has been the subject of several unsuccessful Commerce Clause challenges based on NFIB 's inactivity principle is 18 U.

S ee, e. Humphrey, F. Parton, F. Since Holland , reviewing courts have deemed a number of federal statutes implementing treaty requirements constitutionally permissible under the Necessary and Proper Clause.

Ferreira, F. Wang Kun Lue, F. See also United States v. Lara, U. See generally Edward T. For criticism of the Supreme Court's decision in Missouri v. Holland , and arguments that the treaty power may not expand Congress's legislative power, see Nicholas Quinn Rosenkranz, Executing the Treaty Power , Harv. In the aftermath of Bond , the Ninth Circuit rejected a constitutional challenge to the CWCIA, finding that the statute, when applied to a crime that was not "purely local" in nature,was "within the constitutional powers of the federal government under the Necessary and Proper Clause and the Treaty Power.

Fries, F. Mikhel, F. We are thus bound by our prior cases. This shorthand reflects the fact that the three amendments were ratified between and in the wake of the Union's victory in the Civil War. Bitzer, U. Mitchell, U. Austin Mun. Holder, U. It should be noted, however, that these three amendments were neither drafted nor enacted as a package.

See generally John E. See Ex parte Virginia, U. See Seminole Tribe of Fla. Florida, U. Croson Co. One such fundamental change is that, prior to the Civil War Amendments, the Supreme Court had held that the protections in the Bill of Rights did not apply to the actions of the states. Tiernan v. Mayor of Baltimore, 32 U. Following the enactment of the Fourteenth Amendment, however, the Court has held that many of the protections of the Bill of Rights are applicable to the states. See McDonald v.

City of Chicago, U. Ex parte Virginia , U. See also id. See Jones v. Alfred H. Mayer Co. See Oregon v. Morgan, U. See Lassiter v. Northampton Cty. City of Boerne , U. Likely because of its broad, general guarantee of "due process" and "equal protection of the laws," see U. Foremost among these limitations is the time-honored principle that the Fourteenth Amendment, by its very terms, prohibits only state action.

The Fifteenth Amendment, too, is also generally understood to require state action. Allwright, U. Notably, the Thirteenth Amendment lacks a state action requirement. See Griffin v. Breckenridge, U. See City of Boerne , U. In addition, when legislating under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, Congress may not violate "the fundamental principle of equal sovereignty" by treating states unequally without sufficient reason.

See Shelby Cty. This equal sovereignty limit is explained in more detail in a separate section of this report. See infra "Equal Sovereignty Doctrine. Coleman v. Court of Appeals of Md. Prepaid Postsecondary Educ. Expense Bd.

Bank, U. As a result of the state action limit on its Fourteenth Amendment powers, Congress has instead relied on its Commerce Clause powers to prohibit discrimination in public accommodations. McClung, U. See generally supra "Commerce Clause. Brentwood Acad. Secondary Sch. Athletic Ass'n, U. Edison Co. Raines, U. See Tennessee v. Lane, U. City of Boerne v. Flores, U. See also Coleman v.

Kimel v. See infra "The Eleventh Amendment and State Sovereign Immunity" explaining constitutional basis and scope of state sovereign immunity.

See Coleman , U. Compare Garrett , U. See City of Boerne v. Dep't of Human Res. Hibbs, U. Georgia, U. Katzenbach, U. Compare Kimel v. Although "Necessary and Proper Clause" is the modern term for this constitutional provision, historically it was often called the "Sweeping Clause.

See Kinsella v. Singleton, U. But see Alison L. Holland, U. See J. See Comstock , U. See 18 U. Notably, the civil commitment provisions applied to any person in federal custody, regardless of whether his conviction was for a sex-related crime or not.

In practice, however, many of the individuals committed under the statute were in federal custody for a sex crime that fell within federal jurisdiction, such as possession of child pornography that "has been shipped or transported in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce.

Thompson, F. See also, e. Brune, F. Coppock, F. Elk Shoulder, F. Carel, F. Shibin, F. See Artis v. District of Columbia, S. Edgar, F. See Sabri v. Al Bahlul v. United States, F. Printz v. Murphy v. NCAA, S. The Tenth Amendment provides that "[t]he powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. In Condon , the Court relied in part on its decision in South Carolina v.

Baker , which similarly rejected a Tenth Amendment challenge to a statute removing a federal tax exemption for interest earned on state and local bonds unless they were issued in registered as opposed to bearer form.

Operating under the assumption that the challenged law "effectively prohibit[ed] issuing [bearer] bonds," the Court upheld the law on the grounds that it applied to both state governments and private corporations, and therefore did not "seek to control or influence the manner in which States regulate private parties. Altria Grp. Good, U. While the Court has not yet directly addressed Congress's Fourteenth Amendment powers in its anti-commandeering decisions, other decisions arguably suggest and a number of commentators have assumed that another "exception" to the anti-commandeering doctrine exists in cases where Congress legislates pursuant to its power to enforce the Fourteenth Amendment "by appropriate legislation.

Bradley, U. New York v. See also FERC v. Mississippi, U. See Alfred R. Environmental Law , 4 Envtl. See Coll. Bank v. Klutznick, U. See also Helvering v. Butler, U. The Court has explained that in considering whether a federal expenditure is intended to serve the general welfare, courts "should defer substantially to the judgment of Congress.

Indeed, the Court has even questioned whether the "general welfare" requirement "is a judicially enforceable restriction at all. Valeo, U. See also "Spending Clause" supra. See Dole , U. While the "clear notice" and "relatedness" principles discussed infra appear to stem from broader constitutional principles concerning the nature of state sovereignty as opposed to anything found in the text of the Spending Clause, whether those principles qualify as "internal" or "external" limitations on federal power is open to debate.

This report addresses the "clear notice" and "relatedness" doctrines with the other limits not found directly within the text of the Spending Clause for ease of discussion. Samuel R. In a footnote, the Dole Court declined to "define the outer bounds of the 'germaneness' or 'relatedness' limitation on the imposition of conditions under the spending power.

Lynn A. The Twenty-First Amendment repealed the Eighteenth Amendment's prohibition of the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcoholic beverages, replacing it with a prohibition of "[t]he transportation or importation into any State.

See Madison v. Virginia, F. Wilkinson, F. Area Transit Auth. But see Commonwealth of Va. Riley, F. See Andrew B. Sebelius, 89 Chi. Applying the test for determining a case's holding when a majority of the Supreme Court agrees on a result but "no single rationale explaining the result enjoys the assent of five Justices," see Marks v.

Circuits have concluded that because Chief Justice Roberts's opinion rested on narrower grounds than did an opinion reaching the same result joined by Justices Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas, and Alito, the portion of Chief Justice Roberts's NFIB opinion addressing the "anti-coercion" issue is controlling.

Comm'n on Envtl. Quality v. EPA, F. Burwell, F. NFIB , U. In arriving at this conclusion, the Court rejected the federal government's argument that conditioning the continuation of pre-existing Medicaid funding on compliance with the ACA's Medicaid expansion was permissible because in imposing that condition, Congress had not threatened to withhold funds earmarked for any other programs. Specifically, the federal government had argued that 1 Congress can place conditions on how federal funds are to be used, and 2 conditioning Medicaid funding on compliance with the Medicaid expansion amounted to placing conditions on how Medicaid funds were to be used.

The Court rejected this argument on the grounds that the Medicaid expansion "transformed" Medicaid from a program designed to cover discrete categories of needy persons into a more comprehensive program covering "the entire nonelderly population with income below percent of the poverty level," thereby "accomplish[ing] a shift in kind, not merely degree.

Because the ACA's Medicaid expansion effectuated this type of change, the Court reasoned, the challenged provision was properly viewed as threatening to deprive states of an "independent" federal grant pre-existing Medicaid funding , requiring the Court to evaluate whether that threat was overly coercive. Jonathan H.

Sebelius, 43 Ecology L. Legislative Branch Section IX. Constitution Annotated prev next. Section 9 Clause 1 The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a Tax or duty may be imposed on such Importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each Person.

Prohibition on Taxes on Exports Clause 6 No Preference shall be given by any Regulation of Commerce or Revenue to the Ports of one State over those of another: nor shall Vessels bound to, or from, one State, be obliged to enter, clear, or pay Duties in another. Prohibition on Port Preferences Clause 7 No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law; and a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time.

Foreign Emoluments Clause. The following state regulations pages link to this page.