Tenth Amendment

The Tenth Amendment, ratified in 1791 with the rest of the Bill of Rights, reads: "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." It restates the principle that the federal government has only enumerated powers.

For decades courts treated the amendment as a truism with little independent force. Since the 1990s, however, the Supreme Court has used it to support the anti-commandeering doctrine: Congress may not order state legislatures to pass laws (New York v. United States, 1992) or order state officers to carry out federal programs (Printz v. United States, 1997). Murphy v. NCAA (2018) applied the same principle to strike down a federal ban on states authorizing sports betting.

The amendment is a touchstone for advocates of federalism and states' rights. It cuts in different political directions: states have invoked it to resist federal gun and health rules, and the anti-commandeering doctrine also supports sanctuary jurisdiction policies, since the federal government cannot require local police to enforce immigration law.