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20  MURPHY v. NATIONAL COLLEGIATE ATHLETIC ASSN. 

Opinion of the Court 

simply  treat  state  bonds  the  same  as  private  bonds.    The 
anticommandeering  doctrine  does  not  apply  when  Con­
gress  evenhandedly  regulates  an  activity  in  which  both
States and private actors engage. 

That principle formed the basis for the Court’s decision 
in Reno v. Condon, 528 U. S. 141 (2000), which concerned 
a federal law restricting the disclosure and dissemination 
of  personal  information  provided  in  applications  for  driv­
er’s licenses.  The law applied equally to state and private 
actors.  It did not regulate the States’ sovereign authority 
to “regulate their own citizens.”  Id., at 151. 

In  Hodel,  452  U. S.,  at  289,  the  federal  law,  which  in­
volved  what  has  been  called  “cooperative  federalism,”  by 
no  means  commandeered  the  state  legislative  process.
Congress enacted a statute that comprehensively regulated
surface  coal  mining  and  offered  States  the  choice  of 
“either  implement[ing]”  the  federal  program  “or  else 
yield[ing] to a federally administered regulatory program.” 
Ibid.  Thus, the federal law allowed but did not require the 
States to implement a federal program.  “States [were] not
compelled  to  enforce  the  [federal]  standards,  to  expend
any state funds, or to participate in the federal regulatory
program  in  any  manner  whatsoever.”    Id.,  at  288.  If  a 
State did not “wish” to bear the burden of regulation, the 
“full  regulatory  burden  [would]  be  borne  by  the  Federal 
Government.”  Ibid.
  Finally,  in  FERC  v.  Mississippi,  456  U. S.  742  (1982),
the federal law in question issued no command to a state 
legislature.  Enacted  to  restrain  the  consumption  of  oil 
and  natural  gas,  the  federal  law  directed  state  utility 
regulatory commissions to consider, but not necessarily to 
adopt,  federal  “ ‘rate  design’  and  regulatory  standards.” 
Id., at 746.  The Court held that this modest requirement 
did  not  infringe  the  States’  sovereign  powers,  but  the 
Court warned that it had “never . . . sanctioned explicitly a 
federal command to the States to promulgate and enforce