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14  MURPHY v. NATIONAL COLLEGIATE ATHLETIC ASSN. 

Opinion of the Court 

were  construed  to  require  States  to  maintain  their  laws 
prohibiting  sports  gambling.  Brief  for  Respondents  38;
Brief  for  United  States  19.    They  invoke  the  canon  of 
interpretation  that  a  statute  should  not  be  held  to  be
unconstitutional  if  there  is  any  reasonable  interpretation 
that can save it.  See Jennings v. Rodriguez, 583 U. S. ___, 
___ (2018) (slip op., at 12).  The plausibility of the alterna­
tive interpretations is debatable, but even if the law could 
be  interpreted  as  respondents  and  the  United  States
suggest,  it  would  still  violate  the  anticommandeering 
principle, as we now explain. 

III
 
A 

The anticommandeering doctrine may sound arcane, but 
it  is  simply  the  expression  of  a  fundamental  structural 
decision  incorporated  into  the  Constitution,  i.e.,  the  deci­
sion  to  withhold  from  Congress  the  power  to  issue  orders
directly  to  the  States.  When  the  original  States  declared 
their  independence,  they  claimed  the  powers  inherent  in 
sovereignty—in the words of the Declaration of Independ­
ence,  the  authority  “to  do  all  . . .  Acts  and  Things  which 
Independent States may of right do.”  ¶32.  The Constitu­
tion limited but did not abolish the sovereign powers of the
States,  which  retained  “a  residuary  and  inviolable  sover­
eignty.”  The  Federalist  No.  39,  p. 245  (C.  Rossiter  ed. 
1961).  Thus, both the Federal Government and the States 
wield  sovereign  powers,  and  that  is  why  our  system  of
government is said to be one of “dual sovereignty.”  Greg- 
ory v. Ashcroft, 501 U. S. 452, 457 (1991).

The  Constitution  limits  state  sovereignty  in  several 
ways.  It directly prohibits the States from exercising some
attributes  of  sovereignty.    See,  e.g.,  Art.  I,  §10.    Some  
grants of power to the Federal Government have been held 
to  impose  implicit  restrictions  on  the  States.    See,  e.g., 
Department  of  Revenue  of  Ky.  v.  Davis,  553  U. S.  328