July 9, 2010

Federalism: It Isn’t Just For Conservatives Anymore


That's about as provocative a post title as I could think of for a more detailed report on the more interesting of the two cases issued yesterday striking down the Federal Defense of Marriage Act, Commonwealth of Massachusetts v. United States Department of Health and Human Services. And it's more than a little unfair because I happen to think that the principle of federalism is one that ought to transcend one's political preferences. It doesn't, very frequently, because whether one is deferential to a federal law or to a state's law seems to depend a lot more on whether one has a policy preference for the result as opposed to a belief in the process.

I.  Let's Dispense With The Idea That Either Conservatives And Liberals Care About Federalism As Anything Other Than A Periodic Convenience

Where is the right boundary line drawn? Social conservatives will, in the wake of Commonwealth v. DHHS, be anxious to take as expansive a reading of Federal power as they can so as to justify the Defense of Marriage Act. This is oddly consistent with the position taken in, for instance, Gonazles v. Raich, the "medical marijuana" case in which the authority of Congress to criminalize marijuana in the Controlled Substances Act was upheld (by a narrower margin than expected). At the same time, though, these same people are the ones most likely to be outraged by Wickard v. Filburn and, more contemporaneously, the "Obamacare" health care reform laws, which are the subject of several pending challenges as having exceeded Federal power.


Not that the politically liberal side of American discourse has been either historically or contemporaneously consistent in their views of Federal-state distribution of power, either – social liberals are all for the use of Federal power to combat racial and gender discrimination in private employment and historically favored Federal laws imposing minimum wages and maximum hours of work, but oppose as an unlawful extensions of Federal power mandates for "waiting periods" or dispensing of information before abortions are performed. The result, for nearly everyone, is more important than how the result is reached.


As I see it, there is no "liberal Constitution" and no "conservative Constitution." It's the same Constitution for all of us. And whether we like the results of a Constitutional analysis of a law or not, we need to understand that this is the supreme law of the land and we all must submit to it. It, too, can be amended, although that is (appropriately) a very difficult thing to do. With that said, the document is intended primarily to create the basic framework of a government of divided powers – powers divided between the branches of the national government, and powers divided between the national and state governments, all of which are limited in scope by individual rights and liberties. Protecting those liberties is accomplished by limiting the powers of government and as we all know or ought to know, setting appropriate limits on the powers of the Federal government was in 1787 and remains today the fundamental issue of Constitutional law.

II.  How Deferential Would A Principled Approach To Federalism Be?

In the most narrow view of Federal power, the Federal government may do only those things which fall within the subject matter areas of the enumerated powers – typically defined as those which are explicitly set forth in Article I, section 8 of the Constitution, although there are a few others. If it's not enumerated, it's not something the Feds can do and therefore the Tenth Amendment reserves that power to a state acting under its "police power" or "plenary power," essentially the power to legislate and regulate on anything it chooses. This is a hard-textual reading of the Constitution. It is also close to the position adopted by secessionists prior to the Civil War and by proponents of Jim Crow and segregation laws in the first half of the twentieth century. It is also a position taken by many contemporary libertarian political scholars who, while they condemn the racially-tainted uses the doctrine has been put to in the past, nevertheless insist that it is the best way to look at the Constitution.


It also is fundamentally inconsistent with post-New Deal jurisprudence about the Commerce Clause. Almost certainly as a result of political leveraging of the Supreme Court in FDR's Presidency, the Court in the 1930's began to take a very expansive reading of the power of Congress to regulate "interstate" commerce as one of its enumerated powers. Pretty much any activity with any economic effect whatsoever, even seemingly purely local activity like a farmer growing wheat to feed his own family, or growing marijuana for personal use within the same state that it is grown, may be "aggregated" into part of broader economic activity and therefore fall within the scope of Federal regulation. To date the only limits to this defined in Supreme Court jurisprudence relate to automatic penalty enhancements for either the possession of firearms within a defined number of feet of a school or certain acts of violence perpetrated against women.


There is also a series of Federal laws operating with a concept called "cooperative federalism," by which the Federal government creates incentives – or withholds those incentives – based on a state's "voluntary" decision to comply with a Federal law. This is how there was a national speed limit of 55 miles an hour when I was a kid, for instance; in the 1990's, Congress abandoned this particular application of the concept but the idea remains still within the potential reach of Congress – if a state adopted the Federal speed limit, it became eligible for Federal highway funds; if it chose to set a speed limit higher than that, no Federal money. Compliance with a variety of Federally-"mandated" educational programs at all levels of public education are incentivized this way, and so are certain welfare programs like AFDC, Medicare, and TANF. So far as I know, no one has ever even brought a serious challenge to the concept of "cooperative federalism," and it is a way in which the Federal government may (indirectly, but not very indirectly) reach into areas that were considered "traditionally" the exclusive province of the state police power.


The most expansive view of Federal power is that when there is a significant national emergency, the Constitution is not a suicide pact, permits things to be done in exigent circumstances that would be more questionable in calm times, and the President's power as commander-in-chief and the unitary Federal official charged with faithfully enforcing and enacting the laws permits the government to do more or less anything it wants at any time. This is functionally the claim made by the Bush Administration because of the Global War On Terror and, frankly, the Obama Administration hasn't backed away from it all that much. It is also functionally the position taken by the Lincoln Administration in the Civil War, which was used to justify things like arresting a sitting Congressman and suspension of the writ of habeas corpus by Presidential order – things which were later determined to be unconstitutional, although not until after the shooting had ended.


Making it even more complicated are areas of "concurrent jurisdiction," in which both state and Federal law may apply. For instance, states may regulate boats and other watercraft, and so may the Federal government as long as the watercraft are operated on the ocean, in "navigable rivers and lakes," or in Federal enclaves like national recreation areas (for instance, Lake Powell in Utah). What constitutes a "navigable river" is far from objectively determinable. Ostensibly, it means that you can access it from the ocean. But very recently, the Los Angeles River was deemed to be "navigable" although I don't think that in even the rainiest of seasons you could take anything more than a canoe up or down it, certainly nothing that could handle the rough seas of the ocean. Calling it a "river" at all as opposed to a "concrete-lined ditch" is something of a vanity, too. Ah, but I digress.


Ah, but I digress. We were trying to understand what are the Constitutionally appropriate demarcations of Federal and state powers. To that end, here's an interesting concept is one I came across in a very different context recently: "expressio unius est exclusio alterius, that is, the express mention of one thing excludes all others." That isn't very helpful, so let's try again in something more strongly resembling English. "Where Congress explicitly enumerates certain exceptions to a general prohibition, additional exceptions are not to be implied, in the absence of evidence of a contrary legislative intent." TRW Inc. v. Andrews, 534 U.S. 19, 28 (2001) (quoting Andrus v. Glover Constr. Co., 446 U.S. 608, 616-617 (1980)). I've not found evidence that the idea is used as a canon of Constitutional interpretation; however, if it's a principle by which statutes are interpreted then it would seem to be appropriate to apply to the Constitution, too.


So if the Constitution sets out specific powers of the Federal government by subject matter area, the principle of expressio unius est exclusio alterius suggests that in areas which are silent, the Federal government lacks power. So that takes us back to the first and least Federal-friendly lens through which to look at the Tenth Amendment; unless it's enumerated in Article I, Section 8, the Federal government can't do it. Taken with the understanding that the Commerce Clause is broad enough in its modern application to justify a great deal of Federal power, that's more or less the approach I would suggest is the right one. What's more, the Constitution limits the powers of the states, too. Article I, Section 10 provides a list of things states may not do. That list is added to by roughly half of the Amendments to the Constitution, too. Given that the Constitution has a list of specific restrictions on the exercise of a state's plenary power, expressio unius est exclusio alterius tells us that if a particular kind of law is not excluded from a state's powers, it is therefore included.


This view is also consistent with one of the original conceptions of the Constitution, which was that it was a compact between the States to limit their own power and establish a central government for their common benefit.

III.  The Full Faith And Credit Clause Is Irrelevant To This Case

But there are also what may be called the "transactional" powers of Congress, and here we get in to some really interesting questions. Separate and apart from the Commerce Clause's power, Congress has the power to regulate relations between the states, for instance and most interestingly in this case, Article IV, Section 1, which reads in full:

Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State. And the Congress may by general Laws prescribe the Manner in which such Acts, Records and Proceedings shall be proved, and the Effect thereof.
It is not entirely clear how much of this section is properly called the "Full Faith and Credit Clause," but both sentences are part of the Constitution. I'll have more about this in a moment. But the point is that the Constitution, itself, requires one state to recognize and give effect to the laws and other public acts which have taken place in other states. So a money judgment against me in California can be enforced against me if I move to Tennessee; Congress may pass a law whereby the manner in which such a "sister-state judgment" can be uniformly recognized. In practice, each state has its own "sister-state judgment" law and except for Indiana, Massachusetts, and Vermont they are all the same law, so there is no need for such a Federal law, although it would seem that Article IV, Section 1 would authorize such a law were Congress to pass it. So with that in mind, let's take a look at DOMA itself. The disputed provision, 1 U.S.C. section 7, reads as follows:

In determining the meaning of any Act of Congress, or of any ruling, regulation, or interpretation of the various administrative bureaus and agencies of the United States, the word "marriage" means only a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife, and the word "spouse" refers only to a person of the opposite sex who is a husband or a wife.
Supporters of DOMA have long claimed that this falls squarely within the powers explicitly given to Congress by Article IV, Section 1. Critics of DOMA have long claimed that Article IV, Section 1 prohibits the enactment of DOMA. I'm a critic of DOMA and unsurprisingly, I think that the Full Faith and Credit Clause does not authorize Congress to prescribe which legal acts of one state must be given effect in another state. Congress doesn't get to pick and choose – for instance, money judgments for debts predicated upon writing bad checks must be honored across state lines, but money judgments for debts incurred in gambling need not be. No – a judgment is a judgment is a judgment. Congress may say how you prove up a sister-state judgment, but if there's a judgment against me in California, Tennessee is obligated to honor and enforce that judgment, no matter what Congress says.


But what about that last bit of the clause, "…and the effect thereof"? To what word or phrase in the previous clause does the word "thereof" refer? "General Laws" (as in, "the effect of the general laws Congress enacts")? "Acts, Records and Proceedings" (as in, "the effect of the acts, records, and proceedings")? Or "proved" (as in, "the effect of proving an act, record, or proceeding")? Or all of the above? Maddeningly, rules of composition and style were hardly settled in 1783 when this document was written. I'm reminded of a classic grammar bromide:

Let's eat Shatner!
Let's eat, Shatner!
Commas: They save lives.

It seems to me that a reading of the clause that would allow Congress to pick and choose which kinds of civil judgments, criminal convictions, and contracts issued by one state had to be honored in others would completely defeat the purpose of having a Full Faith and Credit clause in the Constitution in the first place. 

But, we do not need to address this issue today. The Full Faith and Credit Clause will eventually come in to play when a state (let's say, Wisconsin) refuses to recognize a same-sex marriage license given by a sister state (let's say, Iowa). That's not the case in Commonwealth v. DHHS. In yesterday's case, the issue was literally hundreds of thousands of dollars that would have flowed from the Federal treasury into Massachusetts state coffers for veteran's graveyards should the spouse of a Massachusetts veteran ever be buried next to her wife who had honorably served in our nation's proud military and not violated the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy.


So we are dealing with the Federal government's relationship to a state here, not to the relationship between two states with the Federal government serving as an intermediary. Thus, the Full Faith and Credit Clause is not an issue here and while I acknowledge it will eventually be a big player in this debate, maybe as soon as in the Perry v. Schwarzenegger decision, it's not in play today. So let's move on to the real juice and let me get some sleep tonight because the hour is growing late.

IV.  The Resurrection Of The "Traditional State Powers" Doctrine

You see, the most interesting thing about the Commonwealth decision is not its effect on same-sex marriages from a Federal constitutional perspective. For that, you need to look at Commonwealth's companion case decided by the same judge on the same day but on different grounds, Gill v. Office of Personnel Management. The Gill case struck down DOMA on the grounds that it violates the Equal Protection Clause, and will likely weigh heavily in the upcoming decision in Perry v. Schwarzenegger. For a pessimistic view of the long-term effects of Gill, I refer you to no less powerful an authority on same-sex marriage law than Professor Dale Carpenter, who fears that the less-than-full-throated treatment the issue received from both the Government's attorneys and the Court have left an intellectually shaky foundation for future equal protection challenges to state laws about same-sex marriage. No, the really interesting thing in Commonwealth is the standard of analysis used by the judge in his Tenth Amendment review of DOMA.

 
Functionally, Judge Tauro revives the idea that the Tenth Amendment prohibits the Federal government from legislating in "traditional state governmental functions" . This approach was struck down as a matter of doctrine in Garcia v. San Antonio Metropolitan Transit Authority (1985) 469 U.S. 528. The judge actually has some reasonably good intellectual support for doing so, as Professor David Kopel points out. And it is here that social conservatives should really sit up and take notice. As the first and third links in this paragraph describe, this rationale would have profound implications on a fairly significant amount of recently-passed social and economic legislation. The bulk of Obamacare, for instance, falls sharply under a shadow of doubt given the Tenth Amendment rationale used by Judge Tauro, because the regulation of insurance companies has traditionally been something states have done rather than the Federal government. So, those Tea Party activists who have been claiming for a long time that Obamacare represented an unconstitutional overreach of Federal power, therefore, ought to welcome the Commonwealth decision as a step in the right direction.


Which brings us full circle. Almost any legal rationale is almost always going to have results that people of either political persuasion will find agreeable and other results that they find disagreeable. You need to pick your rationale carefully, because you're going to have to live with its results even when they are unpleasant. A rationale that says the Tenth Amendment is a strong and vital part of the Constitution means that there are a lot of things the Federal government can't do, and no matter who you are or what your political ideology is, you're inevitably going to like some of the things that a strong Tenth Amendment will prohibit.


As for this case, ask yourself this – if you had to choose one and only one result, would you a) invalidate Obamacare and tolerate same-sex marriages, or b) enact Obamacare and lose same-sex marriages? As for me, it's a choice between a) eating ice cream or b) cleaning toilets. I'll pick option "a" every time – no Obamacare (yay) and same-sex marriages (yay). For me, the challenge would be, would I be willing to give up a powerful Title VII in order to get there? (Probably yes, because most states have state-level anti-discrimination laws that are at least equal to Title VII so it wouldn't be that much of a sacrifice. But let me think about that a bit before I give you my final answer.)

8 comments:

Unknown said...

So a money judgment against me in California can be enforced against me if I move to Tennessee;

See response to your previous post: you are, by US Supreme Court precedent, completely incorrect with this assertion.

Burt Likko said...

For viewers playing along at home, the case Mike refers to is McElmoyle v. Cohen (1839) 38 U.S. 312 and I haven't had a chance to Shepardize it. I'll assume it's still good law, unmodified since it was handed down.

So am I completely wrong to say that a judgment in one state must be enforced in another? I don't think so. I agree that McElmoyle holds that if I seek to enforce a CA judgment against you in TN, you can use defenses in TN state law to resist enforcement in TN. Why? Because the Full Faith and Credit Clause means TN treats the CA judgment debt the same way it treats a TN judgment debt.

Nevertheless, even if TN law provides you with a shield against enforcement of the judgment that you would not have under CA law, there is still a judgment against you. I just can't collect it in TN -- the same as if I had originally obtained the judgment in TN rather than in CA.

By analogy to marriage, then, let us assume that A and B are married in Iowa, where A and B live, and C and D are married in Ohio, where C and D live. A and B then move to Ohio. As I read the Full Faith and Credit Clause, Ohio has to treat A and B the same way it treats C and D. The marriage is conclusive and binding upon Ohio by virtue of the FFCC. What Congress can do under FFCC is establish a uniform procedure by which A and B can present their marriage certificate to Ohio for recognition -- the same way that, in McElmoyle, Congress established a way for the creditor to present his out-of-state judgment for collection in the debtor's state, and the debtor's state had to treat that judgment the same as if it had come from its own courts.

Unknown said...

Unfortunately, you are still incorrect.

For instance, by federal law, a 25-year-old man may not transport a 16-year-old girl from one state (say, Mississippi, marital age of consent 21) to, say, Georgia (age of consent "16 with judge's approval) and get married to her there, and expect it to recognized back in the previous state. The state may both refuse to recognize the marriage (which violates their age of consent law and is therefore invalid in the home state) as well as throw him in jail for statutory rape, as well as federal law concerning the transportation of a minor across state lines for sexual purposes.

(Yes, this has been adjudicated before, and is especially relevant in case law regarding Fundie Mormon cults).

Likewise, States are free to ignore "Common-Law" marriages which are administered and recognized by other States. Thus, you may not live in Texas for 10 years, declare yourselves "Common-Law Married", and then move to Wisconsin and immediately register yourselves as Married and file your taxes in Wisconsin as Married.

So, to claim that there are not already "differing categories" of marriage, in which one State cannot fail to recognize marriages recognized by other States, is simply incorrect.

Burt Likko said...

I don't think you've quite hit the target with those examples, but I can see the target from there, and as an SSM advocate, I am provisionally uncomfortable. Where I think you're headed is Franchise Tax Board v. Hyatt (2003) 538 U.S. 488, 494.

FTB v. Hyatt is a recent addition to a line of cases going back at least to the 1930's, judicially creating an exception to (or, if you prefer, an interpretation of) the FFCC. The upshot is that a state can balance its own "fundamental policies" against the policy goals of the state issuing the judgment, decree, etc. which is the subject of the FFCC dispute. The forum state has a big advantage in such a balancing test.

I'm not concern-trolling for your side here, I promise you. Take a look at Hyatt yourself. You'll see why I don't think your Mann Act and common-law marriage examples are quite on target, but you'll also see that they are near an area that looks quite dangerous to the pro-SSM side of the debate.

I intend to research and develop this concept in a future post. But for today, we've veered off topic, because the FFCC isn't a factor in the Commonwealth decision at all.

Unknown said...

FTB v. Hyatt certainly is another example - it certainly leaves room that, even had the DMCA not passed, States with laws and/or constitutional amendments prohibiting gay marriage might refuse to recognize gay marriages issued by other states, since such would be contrary to their own State law or constitution.

To wit: as you state earlier (re: McElmoyle v. Cohen), if a gay-married couple in Massachusetts currently moves to, say, Michigan, they do not have marital rights in Michigan. But they still have them in Massachusetts, and any other state that has legal provisions recognizing them. Likewise, if you are subject to a legal judgement that your current state rules unenforceable, you are "safe" until such time as you travel through a state which will honor the judgement (should there be a warrant put out for your failure to pay in the issuing state), or you acquire property interests or some other interest in a state honoring said judgement that could be attached by lien.

The other arguments made by Tauro are very unlikely to prevail, because he rejected an amazing number of arguments out of hand in order to veer into the "rational basis" test, a class of review that has always been weak and has more often than not been ruled invalid when faced with clear arguments relating to .

The "rational basis" for the Federal DOMA could today be declared quite simply: some States use one standard for Marriage, some for another, States using a more restrictive standard are not being fairly treated in the use of their tax dollars if the Federal gov't does not administer Federal programs using a singular, common standard, therefore, the Federal government, in accordance with Article IV, Section 1, has decided to use the lowest common denominator (e.g. not recognizing gay marriages, nor domestic partnerships) for the purpose of administration of Federal programs and definitions.

Is there anything in that argument that you feel does not pass "rational basis" argumentation? I'd really like to know, both the answer and the reasoning.

The coverage over at Newsweek is quite compelling as well today. In specific, the reference to Steven Taylor and the idea that Tauro's 10th-amendment ruling actually supports the State laws and constitutional clauses banning gay marriage in those particular states. The article also links Jack Balkin, another of your pro-gay-marriage compatriots, with some very incisive things to say about the ruling.

Unknown said...

What Congress can do under FFCC is establish a uniform procedure by which A and B can present their marriage certificate to Ohio for recognition -- the same way that, in McElmoyle, Congress established a way for the creditor to present his out-of-state judgment for collection in the debtor's state, and the debtor's state had to treat that judgment the same as if it had come from its own courts.

As I understand it, this is precisely what the DOMA (at least the state-recognition part) does. It leaves, very pointedly, the option for the a Massachusetts gay, married couple to present their Massachusetts marriage license to the State of Michigan, and the State of Michigan to say "so sorry, but according to our State constitution, this document is not recognized as valid", just as the State of Michigan could take a legal judgment of debt from Massachusetts and (theoretically) say "so sorry, but by our State law this debt is too old to be enforceable."

Is that in disagreement?

Burt Likko said...

Judge Tauro didn't analyze the rational basis claim that you propose because that rationale was not offered to him for analysis. Indeed, the government stipulated that none of the articulated justifications within DOMA itself passed muster under the rational basis test, and instead tried to offer new and different justifications.

Prof. Balkin does indeed have much to criticize about the Commonwealth opinion; I'm not real sure I'm a fan of it either, all things considered (as in, I like the result but I'm kind of sketchy on the reasoning used to get there). I linked to Prof. Balkin's analysis in my original post.

As to your last point, that is not my understanding of the state-recognition section of DOMA. It does not establish a uniform process for the presentation of a marriage certificate to a new state. Rather, it says that no state is obligated to recognize a same-sex marriage from another state if the form state's own laws do not recognize same-sex marriages. No process is created; rather, a particular result is (purportedly) authorized. The validity of that authorization is questionable after yesterday's rulings, but I don't think they directly challenge them since those were not the sections of DOMA that were struck down in either of the two Massachusetts cases.

By the way, I intend to allow you the last word in this exchange, if you want it. I only responded here because you asked direct questions of me.

Unknown said...

Judge Tauro didn't analyze the rational basis claim that you propose because that rationale was not offered to him for analysis. Indeed, the government stipulated that none of the articulated justifications within DOMA itself passed muster under the rational basis test, and instead tried to offer new and different justifications.

This, alas, offers perhaps the best reason why Tauro's rulings will almost certainly be overturned on appeal; the higher that appeals go, the more groups will offer up Amicus briefs, and the brighter spotlight will be on those who are representing the government's case. Obama's cronies may have been able to "play to lose" in District court, but if they try it again down the line - especially if they deliberately ignore strong arguments put forth by other groups in Amicus - there won't just be a major public outcry, but there's a real chance they could be disbarred on the grounds of either raw incompetence, deliberate failure to exercise due diligence, violation of oath of office, or any of another dozen reasons related to deliberately "playing to lose" and failing to represent their client (the government) to the best of their ability.