PRINTER'S NO. 1340
No. 87 Session of 1989
INTRODUCED BY FISHER, PORTERFIELD AND WENGER, JUNE 26, 1989
REFERRED TO INTERGOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS, JUNE 26, 1989
A CONCURRENT RESOLUTION
1 Urging the President and the United States Congress to carry out
2 their responsibilities to protect and strengthen the position
3 of the states in the Federal union, avoid intrusion upon
4 state prerogatives and afford protection to the proper
5 governing authorities of the states.
6 WHEREAS, The Tenth Amendment, part of the original Bill of
7 Rights, reads as follows: "The powers not delegated to the
8 United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the
9 States, are reserved to the States respectively, or the people";
10 and
11 WHEREAS, The limits on the authority of Congress to regulate
12 State activities prescribed by the Tenth Amendment have recently
13 been the subject of debate by the Supreme Court in the cases of
14 Garcia v. San Antonio Metropolitan Transit Authority, 469 U.S.
15 528 (1985), and South Carolina v. Baker, 99 L Ed 2d 592 (April
16 1988); and
17 WHEREAS, These cases hold that the limits of the Tenth
18 Amendment are structural and not substantive, leaving states to
19 find protection from Congressional regulation through the
1 national political process, rather than through judicially
2 defined spheres of residual state authority; and
3 WHEREAS, These United States Supreme Court decisions invite
4 further Federal preemption of state authority; therefore be it
5 RESOLVED (the House of Representatives concurring), That it
6 is the consensus of the General Assembly of the Commonwealth of
7 Pennsylvania that the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the
8 United States is and always has been of operational force
9 governing and balancing the respective powers of the states and
10 the Federal Government. It is the further sense of this body to
11 affirm that the Tenth Amendment is a substantive limit on
12 national power and should so be applied as a test by the Courts
13 of the United States and of the several states in the cases
14 coming before them where a question of the exercise of the
15 Federal authority is raised; and be it further
16 RESOLVED, That this resolution be forwarded to the President
17 and to the United States Congress, urging them to carry out
18 their responsibilities to protect and strengthen the position of
19 the states in the Federal union, avoid intrusion upon state
20 prerogatives and afford protection to the proper governing
21 authorities of the states.
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