Opinion ID: 542858
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Tenth Amendment Argument

Text: 55 We also reject the State's contention that the Tenth Amendment precludes application of the ADEA to state-court judges. The Tenth Amendment, [w]ith rare exceptions, ... does not carve out express elements of state sovereignty that Congress may not employ its delegated powers to displace. Garcia v. San Antonio Metropolitan Transit Authority, 469 U.S. 528, 550, 105 S.Ct. 1005, 1017, 83 L.Ed.2d 1016 (1985); see South Carolina v. Baker, 485 U.S. 505, 108 S.Ct. 1355, 99 L.Ed.2d 592 (1988). State sovereign interests ... are more properly protected by procedural safeguards inherent in the structure of the federal system than by judicially created limitations on federal power. Garcia, 469 U.S. at 552, 105 S.Ct. at 1018. In Baker, the Court observed that where ... the national political process did not operate in a defective manner, the Tenth Amendment is not implicated. 485 U.S. at 513, 108 S.Ct. at 1361 (emphasis in original). 56 Vermont cannot meet this standard. No showing has been made that the national political process involved in enacting the ADEA was in any way defective. The original statute and its amendments apparently received plenary consideration in Congress, as did the Title VII provisions that became the model for the provision at issue here. Though the State informs us that Vermont's senators were absent from the debate on the Title VII extension and argues that their absence somehow tainted the legislative process, we regard that argument as frivolous. There is no suggestion that Congress surreptitiously enacted any legislation without notice to the State of Vermont. Indeed, we note that Senator Stafford of Vermont was one of the managers of the Senate bill to amend Title VII. See Joint Explanatory Statement, 1972 USCCAN at 2186. In any event, the absence of a given legislator or legislators, so long as the legislative body's appropriate procedural rules have been followed, does not mean that the national process leading to the enactment of a given piece of legislation was flawed. The Garcia-Baker standard is a very high one, and the State has not come close to meeting it.