Court Opinion

ID: 9431248
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:31:47.480497+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:27.623593
License: Public Domain

Justice Scalia,
concurring in part and concurring in the judgment.
I join in the Court’s judgment, and in its opinion except for Part II. I do not join the latter because, as observed by The Chief Justice, post, at 529-530, it unnecessarily casts doubt upon FERC v. Mississippi, 456 U. S. 742 (1982), and because it misdescribes the holding in Garcia v. San Antonio Metropolitan Transit Authority, 469 U. S. 528 (1985). I do not read Garcia as adopting — in fact I read it as explicitly disclaiming — the proposition attributed to it in today’s opinion, ante, at 512-513, that the “national political process” is the States’ only constitutional protection, and that nothing except the demonstration of “some extraordinary defects” in the operation of that process can justify judicial relief. We said in Garcia: “These cases do not require us to identify or define what affirmative limits the constitutional structure might impose on federal action affecting the States under the Commerce Clause. See Coyle v. Oklahoma, 221 U. S. 559 (1911).” 469 U. S., at 556 (emphasis added). I agree only that that structure does not prohibit what the Federal Government has done here.