Opinion ID: 613270
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Hugo's Dormant Commerce Clause Claim Is Structural

Text: Branson divides political subdivision constitutional claims into two categories: structural rights claims, which support standing, and individual rights claims, which do not. [11] We know from Branson 's reading of Hunter, Trenton, and Williams that the Contract Clause, Due Process Clause, and Equal Protection Clause fall into the individual rights claims category. Dormant Commerce Clause claims, properly understood, fall into the structural rights category. Branson does not elaborate on its distinction between structural and individual rights. But Branson 's allowing a political subdivision to bring a preemption claim provides a clue to understanding the distinction. A preemption claim alleges that a federal statute is supreme relative to conflicting state law. Such a claim is structural because it concerns the relative authority of federal and state government. An individual right claim, by contrast, concerns the limits of government authority over the individual. Dormant Commerce Clause claims are more like preemption than individual rights claims because they concern the relative power of federal and state government. They ask whether state law improperly interferes with an area of federal concern  interstate commerce. [12] An additional clue to understanding Branson 's distinction between individual and structural rights are the words written to protect in Branson 's key passage that political subdivision standing is forbidden only when the constitutional provision that supplies the basis for the complaint was written to protect individual rights, as opposed to collective or structural rights. 161 F.3d at 628. The Bill of Rights, the Contract Clause (at issue in Hunter and Trenton ), the Due Process Clause (at issue in Hunter and Trenton ), and the Equal Protection Clause (at issue in Williams ) were written to protect individual rights. By contrast, the enumerated powers of Article I, Section 8 both authorize and limit what Congress can do, and, from the standpoint of limiting power, were written to protect states' rights. The Commerce Clause, therefore, was written to protect the allocation of power between the federal government and the states. See Akhil Reed Amar, America's Constitution: A Biography 105-08 (2005); The Federalist No. 45 (James Madison). The implied dormant Commerce Clause protects that structural allocation. Hugo's dormant Commerce Clause claim, like the preemption claim in Branson, addresses structural issues. [T]here is widespread acceptance of our authority to enforce the dormant Commerce Clause, which we have but inferred from the constitutional structure as a limitation on the power of the States. United States v. Lopez, 514 U.S. 549, 579, 115 S.Ct. 1624, 131 L.Ed.2d 626 (1995) (Kennedy, J., concurring). The dormant Commerce Clause doctrine provides that, unless authorized by Congress, states lack power to regulate in certain matters reserved for national legislation. Both dormant Commerce Clause claims and preemption claims based on federal laws enacted pursuant to the Commerce Clause concern the relationship between federal and state governments and the relative scope of federal and state power. These claims represent the two situations where Article I of the Constitution restrains state regulation of commerce. See Kathleen M. Sullivan & Gerald Gunther, Constitutional Law 175 (17th ed.2010). Congressional intent on the relation between state and federal law is a critical issue when a preemption claim is based on Congress's exercise of its Commerce Clause power and also when a dormant Commerce Clause claim may be resolved based on whether Congress authorized state regulation. These are techniques Congress may employ in the ordering [of] relations between the nation and the states. Id. at 243. One leading commentator understood the dormant Commerce Clause to be exactly the sort of structural right that Branson meant to allow political subdivision standing: The Fifth and Tenth Circuits, for example, have limited cities' standing to cases that involve claims under the Supremacy Clause and other structural restrictions on state power, such as the Dormant Commerce Clause.  David J. Barron, Why (and When) Cities Have a Stake in Enforcing the Constitution, 115 Yale L.J. 2218, 2250 (2006) (emphasis in original). The conceptual affinity of the preemption doctrine and the dormant Commerce Clause is reflected in cases where both types of challenges are raised against the same statute. For example, in City of Philadelphia v. New Jersey, 437 U.S. 617, 98 S.Ct. 2531, 57 L.Ed.2d 475 (1978), a New Jersey law banning importation of solid and liquid waste from out of state to New Jersey landfills was challenged under both the preemption doctrine and the dormant Commerce Clause. The Court held that federal legislation did not preempt the state law, id. at 620, 98 S.Ct. 2531, but also held that the state law violated the dormant Commerce Clause, id. at 629, 98 S.Ct. 2531. The resemblance between preemption and dormant Commerce Clause arguments is especially clear in cases addressing whether a federal statute gives congressional consent to state regulation and therefore insulates a state law from dormant Commerce Clause challenge. In Sporhase v. Nebraska, ex rel. Douglas, 458 U.S. 941, 102 S.Ct. 3456, 73 L.Ed.2d 1254 (1982), the Court considered whether federal laws consented to a Nebraska law limiting out-of-state transfer of groundwater and thereby insulated it from dormant Commerce Clause challenge. The Court said no. Id. at 960, 102 S.Ct. 3456. The question in consent cases such as Sporhase and in preemption cases is what state legislation Congress intended to allow or disallow when it enacted a federal statute. Whether the issue is preemption (Congress has spoken in conflict with state law), dormant Commerce Clause (Congress is silent), or consent (Congress has spoken to authorize state law), all address a common question: the state's power to act. When a federal statute or the dormant Commerce Clause invalidates a state law, in both instances the Supremacy Clause requires that result, and both instances involve a federalism analysis, not an individual rights analysis. In this case, as in Branson, Congress has spoken. A central question is whether the Red River Compact authorizes the Oklahoma statutes that limit interstate commerce in water. Whether the issue is congressional preemption in Branson or congressional consent in this case, both are hinged to structural analysis and determining congressional intent. The majority correctly indicates that Hugo and Irving have their own economic interests in the outcome of the litigation. But it does not follow that their claim is correctly characterized as based on constitutional provisions ... written to protect individual rights. Branson, 161 F.3d at 628. Party interests are at stake in both preemption and dormant Commerce Clause claims, but the nature of the claim  adjudicating the power of the state relative to that of the federal government  is structural, a question of relative state and federal power. Indeed, the Commerce Clause, upon which the dormant Commerce Clause is based, authorizes Congress to regulate interstate commerce and, as an enumerated right, was in part written to protect the states from federal overreaching. Litigants basing claims on this Article I provision ask courts to adjudicate questions of relative federal and state power, the answers to which affect the parties' interests. In short, such cases call for constitutional interpretation of federal rights and state power  structural rights  not individual rights. Given our Article III standing requirements calling for a plaintiff to show a redressable individual injury in all federal cases, individual interests are virtually always at stake irrespective of the legal basis for the claim. It does not follow that all such claims except for preemption cases fit Branson 's category of individual rights claims. Dormant Commerce Clause claims fit Branson's structural category. [13] The scope of analysis presented here is narrow and does not envision, as the majority describes, a broad availability of suits by political subdivisions to vindicate constitutional interests. Maj. Op. at 1260. If this dissent were the holding in this case, it would stand only for the proposition that a municipality may sue the state to challenge state laws as unconstitutional under the dormant Commerce Clause because such a claim fits within our Branson analysis. Whether any other constitutional provisions would support political subdivision standing is not addressed here.