Printz v. United States: Tenth Amendment Limitations on Federal Access to the Mechanisms of State Government
In Printz v. United States,1 the Supreme Court addressed the Tenth Amendment's protection of state sovereignty, a significant issue in the contemporary debate on the nature of United States federalism. Striking a key provision of the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act2 ("Brady Act") as unconstitutional, the Court expanded Tenth Amend-ment limitations on the federal government's access to the mechanisms of state government. The Court decision implicated issues bearing on the commerce power and the power of Congress to enlist state compli-ance with federal policy objectives.
I. FACTUAL BACKGROUND
Under the commerce power, Congress passed the Brady Act in 1993 as a response to an '"epidemic of gun violence'" afflicting the nation.3 Passed as an amendment to the Gun Control Act of 1968,4 the Brady Act sought to undermine the transfer of firearms to certain persons enumerated by the Gun Control Act.5 The class includes persons who are under the age of twenty-one, persons who do not reside in the dealer's state, and persons who are otherwise prohibited by state and local law from purchasing or possessing firearms.6 Sections 922(d) and (g) include a number of other persons in the class as well.7
To prevent the transfer of firearms to prohibited individuals, the Brady Act mandates the establishment of a national system for checking the backgrounds of prospective handgun purchasers.8 The Brady Act requires the Attorney General to have a permanent federal system in place by November 30, 1998.9 As an interim measure, the Brady Act immediately enlists the service of local chief law enforcement officers ("CLEOs").10 Firearm dealers are required to obtain a prospective handgun purchaser's name, address, birth date, and sworn statement that the prospective purchaser is legally eligible to purchase a firearm under sections 922(b), (d), and (g). The firearm dealer must then provide that information to the CLEO.11 Section 922(s)(2) obliges the CLEO to use the information to '"make a reasonable effort to ascertain within 5 business days whether receipt or possession [of a handgun by the prospective purchaser] would be in violation of the law.'"12 State law would then impose a duty on CLEOs to prevent prohibited firearm transfers.13
The petitioners, CLEOs from counties in Montana and Arizona,14 objected to section 922(s)(2) and to subsequent provisions that required them either to destroy records in their possession relating to a handgun transfer that was deemed legal or to inform prospective purchasers upon request and in writing why the transfer was denied.15 They argued that the Brady Act unconstitutionally pressed them, as state officers, into federal service by compelling them to execute a federal program.16 In Printz v. United States,17 the United States District Court for the District of Montana permanently enjoined the United States from enforcing section 922(s)(2), declaring it unconstitutional and void.18 Likewise, in Mack v. United States,19 the United States District Court for the District of Arizona declared section 922(s)(2) unconstitutional and permanently enjoined its enforcement.20
The Arizona and Montana cases were consolidated, and in Mack v. United States,21 the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit vacated the district courts' permanent injunctions enjoining the enforcement of section 922(s)(2) and reversed the district court rulings holding the section unconstitutional.22 In Printz, the Supreme Court reversed the Ninth Circuit.23 The Court held those federal directives unconstitution-al that require either the officers of the states or the officers of the political subdivisions of the states to administer or enforce federal regulatory programs.24
II. LEGAL BACKGROUND
Printz is the latest development in a line of Supreme Court cases that arguably begins with then Justice Rehnquist's dissent in Fry v. United States.25 In Fry the Court affirmed an injunction preventing Ohio from giving certain state employees a pay raise of 10.6%.26 The Economic Stabilization Act of 197027 allowed the President to regulate salaries and wages, and the Pay Board formed under the Act had limited wage and salary increases to 5.5%.28 Petitioners in Fry argued that the Act violated the Tenth Amendment because it interfered with sovereign state functions.29 Continuing a line of decisions that had been expanding the scope of the commerce power since the New Deal, the majority disagreed, holding that there was no Tenth Amendment violation in congressional regulation of state-employed workers' pay.30
Justice Rehnquist's primary concern in his dissent was the lack of a state "constitutional counterweight" to Congress's use of the commerce power to regulate internal state matters.31 Justice Rehnquist's dissent in Fry can be read as a demand for boundaries that would clearly delineate state and federal power, boundaries that would be "constitutionally unassailable and presumably safeguarded from federal intrusion."32 As a solution to the apparent imbalance in the division of power between the federal government and the states, Justice Rehnquist argued that the line between federal and state power should be drawn where federal legislative action interfered with a state's exercise of its traditional governmental functions.33
Writing for a bare majority in National League of Cities v. Usery,34 Justice Rehnquist constitutionalized his dissent in Fry. In National League of Cities, the Court held that while Congress could touch many different activities through its commerce power, even many wholly intrastate activities, Congress was nevertheless obliged to recognize the different footing upon which the states stand as opposed to the footing of private commerce, which Congress could otherwise regulate through the commerce power.35 The New Deal era witnessed a tremendous expansion of Congress's power under the Commerce Clause, but the Court curtailed this expansion in National League of Cities by prevent-ing Congress from extending the national minimum wage standard to state employees.36
The Tenth Amendment, the Court noted in Fry, was aimed at protecting the ability of the states "'to function effectively in a federal system.'"37 In National League of Cities, the Court explained that the effective functioning of a state within the federal system is dependent upon the state retaining control over its own sovereignty and that the Constitution thus requires Congress to refrain from interfering with the traditional functions of the states.38 The Court held that the provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Amendments of 1974,39 which applied the national minimum wage standard to the wages of a number of state workers, crossed the federal-state boundary, upsetting the balance of power between the two.40 The Court also noted in dictum that just as the commerce power does not allow Congress to transgress the Sixth Amendment right to trial by jury or the Fifth Amendment right to due process, the commerce power does not allow Congress to violate the sovereignty reserved to the states by the Tenth Amendment.41
In Hodel v. Virginia Surface Mining & Reclamation Ass'n,42 the Court again addressed allegations of federal encroachment on state sovereignty when it considered the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act ("Surface Mining Act").43 In order to alleviate the social and environmental problems caused by surface mining, the Surface Mining Act provided for an initial interim phase of federal regulation in which states were allowed to participate and for a permanent secondary phase under which states were given the option of regulating nonfederal lands within their borders subject to the approval of the Secretary of the Interior.44 Otherwise, the Department of the Interior would promulgate and enforce a regulatory program for the state.45 In an attempt to clarify the concept of a traditional governmen-tal function, the Court in Hodel outlined a three-part test for commerce power challenges.46 The Court stated that a successful challenge would show that the challenged statute regulated the '"States as States,'"47 that the challenged statute was directed at indisputable "'attribute[s] of state sovereignty,'"48 and that state compliance with the statute would "directly impair [its] ability 'to structure integral operation in areas of traditional governmental functions.'"49 The challenge to the Surface Mining Act failed on the first element of the test because it did not regulate the states at all; it regulated the mining industry.50 And insofar as the Surface Mining Act touched the states, it did not regulate them but invited them to participate in "cooperative federalism."51
In FERC v. Mississippi,52 the majority named cooperative federalism as an element of its rationale for upholding the Public Utilities Regulatory Policies Act ("PURPA") of 197853 against charges of a Tenth Amendment violation.54 Under PURPA, state energy regulatory authorities were required to adopt policies consistent with congressional desire to encourage the development of alternative sources of energy.55 The Court held it would be constitutionally acceptable for a state's failure to act in accord with federal policy to result in federal preemption of the state's authority to regulate energy utilities.56 In her dissenting opinion, Justice O'Connor said that she believed PURPA fell far short of the cooperative federalism that the Court identified in Hodel.57 Justice O'Connor's dissent in FERC illustrated the Hodel test's insufficiency as a jurisprudential tool for identifying traditional state functions. She asserted that the Court's rationale for its decision had the effect of giving the states an absurd choice.58 Regarding utility regulation as a traditional state function, Justice O'Connor saw Congress requiring the states to either comply with federal...
