HODEL v. VIRGINIA SURFACE MINING AND RECLAMATION ASSOCIATION 452 U.S. 264 (1981)

The Hodel opinion provided a formula for interpreting the demands of national league of cities v. usery (1976). The Supreme Court unanimously upheld an act of Congress stringently regulating private stripmining operations, but providing for relaxation of the federal regulations when a state undertook to regulate the same activities according to standards set out in the act. Justice thurgood marshall, for the Court, wrote that an act of Congress would not be held invalid under the Usery principle unless it satisfied three conditions: that the law regulated "the States as States"; that it addressed "matters that are indisputably "attributes of state sovereignty "; and that it directly impaired the states' ability "to structure integral operations in areas of traditional governmental functions." In Hodel itself, the law failed the first part of the test, for it regulated only private parties. All three requirements were taken from the Usery opinion; in combination, they proved an insuperable hurdle to states seeking to rely on Usery to invalidate federal regulation of state activities, and ultimately led to the overruling of Usery in garcia v. san antonio metropolitan transit authority (1985). Justice william h. rehnquist, who concurred only in the judgment, wrote separately to decry the majority's assumptions concerning the breadth of Congress's commerce power.

Kenneth L. Karst
(1986)