The
Low-Level Radioactive Waste Management Act Amendments of 1985 required States (alone or in compacts with
other States) to dispose of radioactive waste within their borders.
This
was a proposed solution to the NIMBY problem (not in my backyard).
New
York State and Allegany and Courtland counties were unable to comply with
the law due to resistance from residents to proposed radioactive waste
sites and a lack of cooperation from neighboring States.
New
York filed suit against the Federal government, questioning the authority
of Congress to regulate State waste management.
Oddly,
a lot of New York State officials were in favor of this law.
Of
course, that doesn't matter.Constitutional law isn't about getting people to agree, it's
about what the law says.You can't violate the Constitution, even if you get the relevant
branches of government to all agree to do it. (see Buckley v. Valeo (424 U.S. 1 (1976)) for example).
The
US Supreme Court upheld two of the three provisions of the Low-Level Radioactive Waste Management Act, reasoning that Congress had the authority under the Interstate
Commerce Clause to use financial
rewards and access to disposal sites as incentives for state waste
management.
The first
provision was financial rewards.Basically the States that don't
accept waste (or are not part of compacts) are charged a surcharge by
States that have disposal sites.But they don't get the money, the money gets filtered through the
Secretary of Energy and provided back to the States creating the waste if
they were able to build a disposal site or get into a compact before the
1993 deadline.
States
can't tax interstate commerce!But this is coming directly from the Federal government, and the
States doing the taxing don't get the money, so it's ok.
The second
provision was access.The surcharges will increase
every year, and at some point access would be completely denied.
The third
provision, the take-title qualification, stipulated that States must take legal ownership and liability
for low-level waste by 1996.Alternately, they could enact legislation to enact the Federal
proposal.The US Supreme Court found
that this crossed the line distinguishing encouragement from coercion.
"Either
type of Federal action would
commandeer State governments into the service of Federal regulatory
purposes, and would for this reason be inconsistent with the
Constitution's division of authority between Federal and State
governments."
Basically,
with the first two provisions, the States would have had pay more $$$,
but would have a choice if they wanted to participate or not.The third provision though
didn't give the States a choice.No choice = coersion.
In
addition, this provision would give the Federal government regulatory
authority over who owned the waste.The Federal government had no Constitutional
authority to regulate wastes.
The
part of the third provision, where the States were told to enact the
Federal program, was an attempt to get the States to acquiesce to
increased Federal authority to regulate something that they couldn't
Constitutionally regulate.
Federal
government can't force States to enact State legislation.
The Court found that take-title qualification violated the 10th Amendment.
In
a dissent, it was claimed that history is by no means supportive of the
position that the Federal government had no authority to regulate States.
The majority had argued that under the Articles of Confederation, it was said that the Federal government had
the power to regulate States, but not individuals.But the Constitution
flip-flopped and allowed regulation of individuals, but not States.The dissent claimed that this was just wrong.
How
does this ruling compare to that of Garcia v. San Antonio Metropolitan
Transit Authority (469 U.S. 528 (1985))?In that case, the Federal
government was basically forcing States to enact minimum wage laws.Same basic principle, but a
different ruling.
It
was stated that Garcia was still ok, because it only forced State
governments to come into compliance with the Federal standards already in
place for private companies.In this case, there was no regulation of individuals or companies,
so the cases are distinguished.
