One of the reasons that's a profitable business (not that there's so much to it), is that it requires a full funeral director's license. Whoah: there's no rational basis for this! It's just protectionism for that monopolistic industry. That's very rare. Courts, especially federal ones, tend not to strike down economic regulations since 1937. Especially not on due process grounds. Maybe this is an indicator of things to come.
This was a doomed case from the outset, of course: the court will never tell the federal government to cede 1M square miles of land. Inconceivable.
But the court says: property ownership has nothing to do with status. That is a curious statement, given the last 500 years. Still, it's worth noting that land ownership IS in fact a large source of federal power.
The court has flip-flopped on these issues. Minimum wages, for state employees, for example, have been contested. And the court has come down on both sides, in various cases.
So, what does stare decisis mean, when the dissenters basically signal that there will be other cases deciding the same issue?
So Gregory is about whether the federal age discrimination statute can force a change to Missouri statutes requiring judges to retire at 70.
The case is important not for its issue, but for the rhetoric, in which there is a nice defense of Federalism. And says since Federalism is important, if Congress wants to take away the states' power to define the parameters of their own judicial system, it has to do so explicitly and directly. And here, Congress has been fuzzy in its explanation of what it wants to accomplish.
So when there's any doubt, we go with the state rule, because we presume that the states are competent to make their own rules. Interestingly, the majority of SCOTUS is over 70, at which point MO thinks maybe you're too old to be a judge.
Why bring this in federal court, and not TX? Because you'd lose in TX. The TX courts don't want to tell the legislature that their work is inadequate.
Anyway, this is said to raise a due process issue: the liberty interests of the retarded children are not being met.
So the court says it should require TX to increase the quality care. But how will we decide what's an acceptable level? The judge says a 75% increase would be needed to hit the national average. Someone, of course will always be at the bottom. Would a 3% increase be good?
Why should a judge be in charge of allocating the state's resources? Perhaps because the children are without much voice. Their parents, on the other hand, seem to have a great voice: TX is actually spending about $30K/patient. That indicates a fair amount of lobby pressure-- that's probably above the per-capita income in TX.
Why should a court be able to say that this is unconstitutional? Isn't this mutilating federalism? Why have a state at all if the federal government is going to make all the decisions in the state? Well, because this is individual rights, and that required judicial intervention because the political process can't take full account of their needs.
Also, it kind of gets the TX legislature off the hook with all the lobbyists who want the rest of the funds. Instead of being angry at the court, the legislature may be relieved. You could cite Carolene Products here, in the footnote where the court says they're still there for civil rights, etc.
On the other side, you can cite Lopez or Gregory v. Ashcroft.
But not always: there is no right to welfare, or to public schooling (the TX decision notwithstanding; if you *do* educate children, though, there might be some obligation to do it at a certain level), no minimum standard of living guaranteed by the constitution.
Even now, Obama is saying that the courts did a good job with racial equality, but not with economic equality.
NC is willing to receive waste, but they're getting tired of it, and are getting restless about it. So it's gridlock, and the stuff gets more dangerous as it piles up.
So a three-prong legislative effort:
So this case is famous as a case in which the court restricts federal power over the states, but maybe the states didn't really win. Nominally they did, but maybe not really.
Sherriffs: we are state employees. The feds can't order us what to do.
SCOTUS: Congress can induce the states to do what it wants, but it has to pay for it. It can't just order it. Breyer, in dissent, says what does this mean? That the federal government, when it wants to carry out its programs, it can't force the assistence of state personnel, and has to hire its own. Well, if we're worried about burgeoning federal control, maybe more federal staffing is actually counterproductive. So which decision favors federalism really? Hard to say.
In Chisolm v. Georgia SCOTUS said the states could be sued in federal court. Major outrage. Immediate introduction of amendment. Fast ratification.
So. Private people outside the state can't sue a state in federal court. You can sue the state in state court. It's fairly narrow, but tends to be construed expansively: states might even be able to dodge suits by their own citizens, or admiralty suits, or suits by foreign nations, etc., without their consent.
Any sovereign can consent to waive immunity. And states can be sued by the federal government. And the feds can induce states to accept suits against themselves. That's the Jim C case. And state employees can be sued.
Anyway, in Alden, the federal government orders ME to pay its employees according to federal standards (i.e., overtime regulations). ME did not follow the federal standard. Individuals in ME filed suit to force the state to do so. ME claims 11A: private citizens can't sue us in federal court without our consent.
OK, so that works. The people re-file in state court, though. So can the feds order the state to give state judges power that the state doesn't want to give them? Well, that's even more offensive than suits in federal court.
Dissent by Souter: this line of reasoning is doomed, just like the Lochner.
AR: we have sovereign immunity. We did not consent to be sued by the parents. If US Dept of Educ wants to sue us, then OK, but not these individuals. This is exactly what the 11A prohibits.
The circuit court en banc says this was a valid exercise of congressional power: the state took money to assist in education. Never mind that this was not money earmarked for autistic kids: this is a threat of the loss of money for all educational funds: $250M.
So, spending clause wins: congress can spend money how it wants.
Dissents say it is coercive.
Anyway, AR is getting ready to file its cert petition, but the day before, the case itself had started, and the plaintiffs lost on the merits. SCOTUS says cert denied-- it's moot. So we don't know what SCOTUS thinks of this issue.
Note that this is different from the SD highway case: there were no 11A issues there-- it was just spending power.
So are there any limits on the spending clause, or can congress just do whatever it wants, and we should declare the federalism fight just over? Maybe so.
Under the spending clause, though, whose money is this? Don't Arkansans have the right to see their money come back to them (it was taken in taxes after all)? Perhaps the spending clause is so strong that it gets rid of all other clauses, and to nip this problem in the bud we shouldn't let the feds have so much to spend.
When Warren retired, he regarded this as the most important case in his tenure.
Districts in states must have the same number of people. Some courts take this perhaps a bit too literally. 450K persons = 1 house seat, typically. Note that the senate is a glaring exception to this: 2 senators per state regardless of population. Of course, that's specifically written into the constitution. And the constitution would never have been ratified if the small states couldn't get the same amount of power as the big ones. Changing this rule is even more burdensome than the normal 3/4 rule for amending the constitution: all states have to agree.
So it sort of undercuts the rigidity of the court's 1 person 1 vote rule, if the reality of the senate is different.
9 justices. 2 don't go along with this at all (Stevens and Ginsburg). 2 others think FL is wrong (Souter and Breyer), but that the remedy is not just to end the recount but to hold it open for 6 or more days. 7 justices, then, think what FL is doing is inadequate. 5 (the majority) think FL is wrong, and that it's too late to do anything about it, so just end the recount.
Three justices think the "in such a manner as the legislature shall direct" clause is violated by the FL SC re-writing the legislature's laws. 3 USC § 5 says that the laws have to be written prior to the election, so this is even worse, because even the FL legislature couldn't re-write the laws after the election.
Now the FL court basically said "since we can't re-word the FL statutes, which they can't do anyway, we'll just resort to our equitable powers." They open the return period for a longer time, in spite of the fact that it ignores the constitutional imperative to do otherwise.
The "drop dead date" issue also originates from the constitution: a state's slate must be accepted by the congress if it is proffered 6 days prior to the meeting of the electoral college. Breyer says this isn't necessarily a drop dead date-- all the constitution says is that if you're not there in 6 days, congress has the option of not accepting the slate, and that's why we can hold the recount open longer.
If you think SCOUS shouldn't be involved, should the FL SC get involved? If not, Bush wins. If FL gets involved, and isn't overruled, we don't know who wins. As it turns out one party or another would win, just depending on what counting rules one used. Under many scenarios, Bush would win. If only undervotes were counted (hanging chads, etc.), Bush wins. If overvotes were discounted and also late absentee ballots, Gore wins. If everything is counted, Bush wins. This will never be resolved.
If the AG and the Sec State in FL are at loggerheads, we have an impasse. If we read FL statute literally, Sec State decides when the vote is over and how to recount. Of course Sec State is Bush's campaign manager: rules set by her will not be acceptable to democrats. If persuasiveness of the election is a goal, maybe SCOTUS has to get involved, because FL SC is playing fast and loose with the rules.
The Bush side:
The Gore side:
So each side has plenty of reasons why it should win. If one is a democrat, one agrees with one side, and if republican, the other side. This is more of a result-driven issue than most of our cases. That's what policy amounts to, much of the time: all that stuff is just rationalization for the decision the court wants to make.