Opinion ID: 525079
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: The Tenth Amendment Issue.

Text: 38 Next, we address the District's assertion that our construction of section 207(o)(2) renders it unconstitutional. Essentially, the District contends that our interpretation implicitly requires state and local governments to engage in collective bargaining with employee representatives, and that such a requirement violates the tenth amendment. 7 39 Tenth amendment analysis is controlled by the Supreme Court's opinion in Garcia. In National League of Cities, the Court held that the FLSA was inapplicable to state and local governments in areas of traditional governmental functions. National League of Cities, 426 U.S. at 852, 96 S.Ct. at 2474. Garcia rejected this approach and overruled National League of Cities, stating that with rare exceptions, the Constitution does not carve out specific, substantive areas of state sovereignty which Congress may not supplant. Garcia, 469 U.S. at 550, 105 S.Ct. at 1017. Rather, the Constitution protects state interests through procedural and structural safeguards which assure state participation in federal governmental action. Id. at 552, 556, 105 S.Ct. at 1020. The Court stated: 40 [W]e are convinced that the fundamental limitation that the constitutional scheme imposes on the Commerce Clause to protect the States as States is one of process rather than one of result. Any substantive restraint on the exercise of Commerce Clause powers must find its justification in the procedural nature of this basic limitation, and it must be tailored to compensate for possible failings in the national political process rather than to dictate a sacred province of state autonomy. 41 Insofar as the present cases are concerned, then, we need go no further than to state that we perceive nothing in the overtime and minimum-wage requirements of the FLSA, as applied to [the San Antonio Metropolitan Transit Authority], that is destructive of state sovereignty or violative of any constitutional provision. 42 Id. at 554, 105 S.Ct. at 1019 (citations omitted). 43 Given this analysis, we focus not on whether the decision to collectively bargain is a fundamental, traditional, or integral function of state and local governments, 8 but on the national political process surrounding the enactment of the 1985 FLSA amendments to determine whether there was a breakdown which denied state and local governments the opportunity to participate. Although the Supreme Court has declined to define or identify breakdowns which would invalidate congressional enactments, see South Carolina v. Baker, 485 U.S. 505, ----, 108 S.Ct. 1355, 1361, 99 L.Ed.2d 592, 603 (1988), we are confident that in the instant circumstances, the political process did not operate in a defective manner. 9 State and local governments were intensely involved in the proceedings leading to the FLSA amendments, 10 and thus, the amendments do not violate the tenth amendment. 44