Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/17pdf/16-476_dbfi.pdf
Page Number: 19.0

Cite as:  584 U. S. ____ (2018) 

15 

Opinion of the Court 

(2008);  American  Ins.  Assn.  v.  Garamendi,  539  U. S.  396 
(2003).  And  the  Constitution  indirectly  restricts  the
States by granting certain legislative powers to Congress, 
see  Art.  I,  §8,  while  providing  in  the  Supremacy  Clause
that federal law is the “supreme Law of the Land . . . any
Thing  in  the  Constitution  or  Laws  of  any  State  to  the
Contrary notwithstanding,” Art. VI, cl. 2.  This means that 
when  federal  and  state  law  conflict,  federal  law  prevails
and state law is preempted.

The  legislative  powers  granted  to  Congress  are  sizable, 
but  they  are  not  unlimited.  The  Constitution  confers  on 
Congress  not  plenary  legislative  power  but  only  certain
enumerated powers.  Therefore, all other legislative power 
is  reserved  for  the  States,  as  the  Tenth  Amendment  con­
firms.  And  conspicuously  absent  from  the  list  of  powers
given to Congress is the power to issue direct orders to the 
governments  of  the  States.  The  anticommandeering  doc­
trine  simply  represents  the  recognition  of  this  limit  on
congressional authority.

Although  the  anticommandeering  principle  is  simple
and  basic,  it  did  not  emerge  in  our  cases  until  relatively 
recently,  when  Congress  attempted  in  a  few  isolated  in­
stances  to  extend  its  authority  in  unprecedented  ways.
The  pioneering  case  was  New  York  v.  United  States,  505 
U. S.  144  (1992),  which  concerned  a  federal  law  that  re­
quired  a  State,  under  certain  circumstances,  either  to 
“take title” to low-level radioactive waste or to “regulat[e]
according to the instructions of Congress.”  Id., at 175.  In 
enacting  this  provision,  Congress  issued  orders  to  either
the  legislative  or  executive  branch  of  state  government
(depending on the branch authorized by state law to take
the  actions  demanded).  Either  way,  the  Court  held,  the 
provision  was  unconstitutional  because  “the  Constitution
does  not  empower  Congress  to  subject  state  governments 
to this type of instruction.”  Id., at 176. 

Justice O’Connor’s opinion for the Court traced this rule