Yesterday’s unanimous Supreme Court opinion in American Trucking Associations v. City of Los Angeles is a run-of-the-mill federal preemption case, not inviting much attention. But the interesting bit isn’t Justice Kagan’s majority opinion. It’s Justice Thomas’s short concurrence. Thomas agrees that federal law trumps conflicting state/local law regarding certain regulations related to the Port of Los Angeles, but seizes on the plain language of the preempting statute to take a shot at the massive expansion of federal authority under a misreading of the Commerce Clause.
Justice Thomas focuses on a section of the relevant statute (the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act, or FAAAA–don’t ask why this covers ports) titled “Federal authority over intrastate transportation.” He denies that Congress possesses this authority: the Commerce Clause, part of Article I, section 8, only gives Congress the power to regulate commerce “among the several States.” Thomas can’t believe that Congress could have been granted power to legislate something so local as where trucks park once they leave the port (one of the regulations at issue in American Trucking):
Congress cannot pre-empt a state law merely by promulgating a conflicting statute–the preempting statute must also be constitutional, both on its face and as applied. As relevant here, if Congress lacks authority to enact a law regulating a particular intrastate activity, it follows that Congress also lacks authority to pre-empt state laws regulating that activity
Read more at http://www.cato.org/blog/justice-thomas-shows-again-federal-emperor-has-no-constitutional-clothes
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