Opinion ID: 613271
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: The Compact Clause and the Commerce Clause

Text: This case also involves Congress's authority to approve interstate compacts. The Compact Clause provides: No State shall, without the Consent of Congress ... enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State. U.S. CONST. art. I, § 10, cl. 3. The Supreme Court has said that interstate disputes may appropriately be composed by negotiation and agreement, pursuant to the compact clause of the Federal constitution. We say ... that such mutual accommodation and agreement should, if possible, be the medium of settlement, instead of invocation of our adjudicatory power. Colorado v. Kansas, 320 U.S. 383, 392, 64 S.Ct. 176, 88 L.Ed. 116 (1943). Congressional ratification elevates interstate compacts to federal law. Texas v. New Mexico, 482 U.S. 124, 128, 107 S.Ct. 2279, 96 L.Ed.2d 105 (1987). [W]here Congress has authorized the states to enter into a cooperative agreement, and where the subject matter of that agreement is an appropriate subject for congressional legislation, the consent of Congress transforms the States' agreement into federal law under the Compact Clause. Cuyler v. Adams, 449 U.S. 433, 440, 101 S.Ct. 703, 66 L.Ed.2d 641 (1981). As federal law, interstate compacts themselves cannot be challenged under the dormant Commerce Clause. Intake Water Co. v. Yellowstone River Compact Comm'n, 769 F.2d 568, 569-70 (9th Cir.1985). In Intake Water, the plaintiffs challenged the Yellowstone River Compact itself, not state statutes. Id. at 569. The Ninth Circuit concluded that the Compact cannot, by definition, be a state law impermissibly interfering with commerce but is instead a federal law, immune from attack. Id. at 570. This case does not include a challenge to the Compact, but the Compact is the focus of our analysis. We must examine the relationship between the Compact and the Oklahoma water statutes to decide whether Congress has displaced the restrictions of the dormant Commerce Clause.