The Daily Press of Hampton Roads has penned a superb editorial praising the Senate for rejecting a bill that would have required states, localities and municipalities to allow the unionization of their public safety employees, even if such unionization was otherwise contrary to state law. As the Daily Press points out, states that allow such unionization are laboring under the financial yoke of the resulting collective bargaining agreements, struggling to locate the funds necessary to pay the often-inflated salaries and benefits, including pensions, that unions negotiate on behalf of their members, backed up by the threat of a strike or work slowdown.
As the Daily Press puts it:
"From California to Massachusetts, localities are raising taxes, borrowing money, cutting services and eyeing bankruptcy to pay for the police and fire union contracts that have driven up costs, in some cases to the point where the average firefighter costs $170,000 a year in pay and benefits."
Of course, proponents of unionization would invoke various purported benefits of allowing workers to "bargain collectively" (that is, form cartels). Moreover, your humble blogger has previously rebutted some of these arguments. However, as the Daily Press points out, and as this blogger has previously pointed out, there is no apparent rationale for allowing the National Government to impose the benefits of mandatory collective bargaining against the will of individual states. That is to say, if allowing the unionization of public safety employees advances the public interest, then states --- who are uniquely interested in the public safety of their own citizens --- will presumably allow for such unionization themselves. As James Wilson put it, in statement previously quoted by this blog:
"Whatever object of government is confined in its operations and effects, within the bounds of a particular state, should be considered as belonging to the government of that state; whatever object of government extends, in its operation or effects, beyond the bounds of a particular state, should be considered as belonging to the government of the United States."
The decision whether to allow unionization of local public safety workers plainly falls into Wilson's first category --- an "object of government confined in its operations and effects, within the bounds of a particular state" and should thus be left to that state.
Indeed, the Daily Press put this point in Constitutional terms.
"The Constitution reserves to the states all powers not specifically assigned to the federal government. Among those would seem to be the power to manage relations with their own workers. Virginia decided it doesn't want to deal with unions in the government sector, and that works well here."
The Daily Press is plainly referring to the 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which provides:
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
Because the Constitution does not authorize Congress to determine the working conditions of state and local employees, the argument goes, the 10th Amendment reserves such issues to individual states.
To be sure, there are some Supreme Court decisions suggesting that Congress has the authority, employing the power to regulate interstate commerce, to regulate the terms and conditions of the employment of state and local employees. See Garcia v. San Antonio Metropolitan Transit Authority, 469 U.S. 528 (1985). However, Garcia rested upon the assumption --- controversial to be sure --- that the political process would protect states from undue intrusions on their sovereignty, there, the wages and other working conditions of transit workers. It would therefore seem that members of Congress would have a special responsibility in this context to give voice to the sort of federalism values that animate the 10th Amendment and the more general limitation on Congressional powers.
Of course, the Garcia doctrine only comes into play when Congress might otherwise possess the authority to regulate the activity in question. Since 1937, the Supreme Court has rarely struck down a federal statute because it exceeds the scope of the commerce power. In part, this track record reflects judicial deference to Congressional determinations that particular activities in fact have a substantial impact on interstate commerce thereby justifying regulation. Here again, the prospect of such deference demands legislative sensitivity to the sort of federalism concerns that led the founders to place limits on the power of the national government, what John Marshall called "the genius of the whole system."
Kudos to Senator Mark Warner for displaying such sensitivity to federalism concerns in this case and protecting the sovereignty of Virginia against such unjustified intrusion into the state's authority.
More fundamentally, decisions by the Supreme Court are not the final word on the meaning of the Constitution, as Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, James Madison, and Ronald Reagan understood. That is, individual citizens and political actors, when acting within the sphere of their authority, are free to take a different view of the Constitution than that taken by the Supreme Court. So, for instance, in his first inaugural address, President Lincoln announced his opposition to the infamous Dred Scott decision. Moreover, both Andrew Jackson and Ronald Reagan vetoed legislation on constitutional grounds despite Supreme Court precedents holding that such legislation was valid. Public officials take an oath to the Constitution and not to the Supreme Court. Perhaps some Senators believed that the proposed bill exceeded the scope of their authority, properly construed.
