Thomas, J., dissenting
compel the States to enact or administer a federal regulatory program.” Id., at 188.[1]
Yet that is precisely what many spending conditions require the State to do. Spending conditions like FNHRA’s are nothing more than commands to States, qua States, to administer federal benefits programs on terms dictated by Congress. Such conditions cannot be treated as having the force of federal law imposing direct obligations on the States and securing correlative rights of private parties without violating the anticommandeering doctrine.
It is no answer that the States consent to direct regulation by agreeing to the spending conditions in return for federal dollars. As the Court held in New York, “[w]here Congress exceeds its authority relative to the States, … the departure from the constitutional plan cannot be ratified by the ‘consent’ of state officials.” Id., at 182. Because the people have surrendered only limited and enumerated powers to the Federal Government, the States and Congress cannot jointly circumvent the ratification and amendment process by agreeing “to the enlargement of the powers of Congress beyond those enumerated in the Constitution.” Ibid. The Federal Government cannot buy (or rent) the States’ power to implement a federal program and then regard the conditions that the States are implementing themselves as having the force of federal law.
B
Of course, it is ultimately the States’ consent that gives effect to conditions in spending legislation, but it does so in an entirely different manner from an illicit expansion of
- ↑ The anticommandeering doctrine protects “political subdivisions” of States against federal cooptation, as well as the States themselves. Printz v. United States, 521 U. S. 898, 935 (1997); see also id., at 931, n. 15 (“[T]he distinction in our Eleventh Amendment jurisprudence between States and municipalities is of no relevance here”).
