469 U.S. 528 (1985)

GARCIA
v.
SAN ANTONIO METROPOLITAN TRANSIT AUTHORITY ET AL.

No. 82-1913.

Supreme Court of United States.

Argued March 19, 1984. Reargued October 1, 1984. Decided February 19, 1985.^[*] APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE WESTERN DISTRICT OF TEXAS

*529 Solicitor General Lee reargued the cause and filed briefs on reargument for appellant in No. 82-1951. Assistant Attorney General Olson argued the cause for appellants in both cases on the original argument. With him on the briefs on the original argument were Mr. Lee, Assistant Attorney General McGrath, Deputy Solicitor General Geller, Joshua I. Schwartz, Michael F. Hertz, and Douglas Letter. Laurence Gold reargued the cause for appellant in No. 82-1913. With him on the briefs were Earle Putnam, Linda R. Hirshman, Robert Chanin, and George Kaufmann.

William T. Coleman, Jr., reargued the cause for appellees in both cases. With him on the briefs for appellee American Public Transit Association were Donald T. Bliss and Zoe E. Baird. George P. Parker, Jr., filed briefs for appellee San Antonio Metropolitan Transit Authority.^[†]

*530 JUSTICE BLACKMUN delivered the opinion of the Court.

We revisit in these cases an issue raised in National League of Cities v. Usery, 426 U. S. 833 (1976). In that litigation, this Court, by a sharply divided vote, ruled that the Commerce Clause does not empower Congress to enforce the minimum-wage and overtime provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) against the States "in areas of traditional governmental functions." Id., at 852. Although National League of Cities supplied some examples of "traditional governmental functions," it did not offer a general explanation of how a "traditional" function is to be distinguished from a "nontraditional" one. Since then, federal and state courts have struggled with the task, thus imposed, of identifying a traditional function for purposes of state immunity under the Commerce Clause.

In the present cases, a Federal District Court concluded that municipal ownership and operation of a mass-transit system is a traditional governmental function and thus, under National League of Cities, is exempt from the obligations imposed by the FLSA. Faced with the identical question, three Federal Courts of Appeals and one state appellate court have reached the opposite conclusion.^[1]

*531 Our examination of this "function" standard applied in these and other cases over the last eight years now persuades us that the attempt to draw the boundaries of state regulatory immunity in terms of "traditional governmental function" is not only unworkable but is also inconsistent with established principles of federalism and, indeed, with those very federalism principles on which National League of Cities purported to rest. That case, accordingly, is overruled.

I

The history of public transportation in San Antonio, Tex., is characteristic of the history of local mass transit in the United States generally. Passenger transportation for hire within San Antonio originally was provided on a private basis by a local transportation company. In 1913, the Texas Legislature authorized the State's municipalities to regulate vehicles providing carriage for hire. 1913 Tex. Gen. Laws, ch. 147, § 4, ¶ 12, now codified, as amended, as Tex. Rev. Civ. Stat. Ann., Art. 1175, §§ 20 and 21 (Vernon 1963). Two years later, San Antonio enacted an ordinance setting forth franchising, insurance, and safety requirements for passenger vehicles operated for hire. The city continued to rely on such publicly regulated private mass transit until 1959, when it purchased the privately owned San Antonio Transit Company and replaced it with a public authority known as the San Antonio Transit System (SATS). SATS operated until 1978, when the city transferred its facilities and equipment to appellee San Antonio Metropolitan Transit Authority (SAMTA), a public mass-transit authority organized on a countywide basis. See generally Tex. Rev. Civ. Stat. Ann., Art. 1118x (Vernon Supp. 1984). SAMTA currently is the major provider of transportation in the San Antonio metropolitan area; between 1978 and 1980 alone, its vehicles traveled over 26 million route miles and carried over 63 million passengers.

*532 As did other localities, San Antonio reached the point where it came to look to the Federal Government for financial assistance in maintaining its public mass transit. SATS managed to meet its operating expenses and bond obligations for the first decade of its existence without federal or local financial aid. By 1970, however, its financial position had deteriorated to the point where federal subsidies were vital for its continued operation. SATS' general manager that year testified before Congress that "if we do not receive substantial help from the Federal Government, San Antonio may. . . join the growing ranks of cities that have inferior [public] transportation or may end up with no [public] transportation at all."^[2]

The principal federal program to which SATS and other mass-transit systems looked for relief was the Urban Mass Transportation Act of 1964 (UMTA), Pub. L. 88-365, 78 Stat. 302, as amended, 49 U. S. C. App. § 1601 et seq., which provides substantial federal assistance to urban mass-transit programs. See generally Jackson Transit Authority v. Transit Union, 457 U. S. 15 (1982). UMTA now authorizes the Department of Transportation to fund 75 percent of the capital outlays and up to 50 percent of the operating expenses of qualifying mass-transit programs. §§ 4(a), 5(d) and (e), 49 U. S. C. App. §§ 1603(a), 1604(d) and (e). SATS received its first UMTA subsidy, a $4.1 million capital grant, in December 1970. From then until February 1980, SATS and SAMTA received over $51 million in UMTA grants — more than $31 million in capital grants, over $20 million in operating assistance, and a minor amount in technical assistance. During SAMTA's first two fiscal years, it received $12.5 million in UMTA operating grants, $26.8 million from sales taxes, and only $10.1 million from fares. Federal subsidies *533 and local sales taxes currently account for about 75 percent of SAMTA's operating expenses.

The present controversy concerns the extent to which SAMTA may be subjected to the minimum-wage and overtime requirements of the FLSA. When the FLSA was enacted in 1938, its wage and overtime provisions did not apply to local mass-transit employees or, indeed, to employees of state and local governments. §§ 3(d), 13(a)(9), 52 Stat. 1060, 1067. In 1961, Congress extended minimum-wage coverage to employees of any private mass-transit carrier whose annual gross revenue was not less than $1 million. Fair Labor Standards Amendments of 1961, §§ 2(c), 9, 75 Stat. 65, 71. Five years later, Congress extended FLSA coverage to state and local-government employees for the first time by withdrawing the minimum-wage and overtime exemptions from public hospitals, schools, and mass-transit carriers whose rates and services were subject to state regulation. Fair Labor Standards Amendments of 1966, §§ 102(a) and (b), 80 Stat. 831. At the same time, Congress eliminated the overtime exemption for all mass-transit employees other than drivers, operators, and conductors. § 206(c), 80 Stat. 836. The application of the FLSA to public schools and hospitals was ruled to be within Congress' power under the Commerce Clause. Maryland v. Wirtz, 392 U. S. 183 (1968).

The FLSA obligations of public mass-transit systems like SATS were expanded in 1974 when Congress provided for the progressive repeal of the surviving overtime exemption for mass-transit employees. Fair Labor Standards Amendments of 1974, § 21(b), 88 Stat. 68. Congress simultaneously brought the States and their subdivisions further within the ambit of the FLSA by extending FLSA coverage to virtually all state and local-government employees. §§ 6(a)(1) and (6), 88 Stat. 58, 60, 29 U. S. C. §§ 203(d) and (x). SATS complied with the FLSA's overtime requirements until 1976, when this Court, in National League of Cities, overruled Maryland v. Wirtz, and held that the FLSA could not be *534 applied constitutionally to the "traditional governmental functions" of state and local governments. Four months after National League of Cities was handed down, SATS informed its employees that the decision relieved SATS of its overtime obligations under the FLSA.^[3]

Matters rested there until September 17, 1979, when the Wage and Hour Administration of the Department of Labor issued an opinion that SAMTA's operations "are not constitutionally immune from the application of the Fair Labor Standards Act" under National League of Cities. Opinion WH-499, 6 LRR 91:1138. On November 21 of that year, SAMTA filed this action against the Secretary of Labor in the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas. It sought a declaratory judgment that, contrary to the Wage and Hour Administration's determination, National League of Cities precluded the application of the FLSA's overtime requirements to SAMTA's operations. The Secretary counterclaimed under 29 U. S. C. § 217 for enforcement of the overtime and recordkeeping requirements of the FLSA. On the same day that SAMTA filed its action, appellant Garcia and several other SAMTA employees brought suit against SAMTA in the same District Court for overtime pay under the FLSA. Garcia v. SAMTA, Civil Action No. SA 79 CA 458. The District Court has stayed that action pending the outcome of these cases, but it allowed Garcia to intervene in the present litigation as a defendant in support of the Secretary. One month after SAMTA brought suit, the Department of Labor formally amended its FLSA interpretive regulations to provide that publicly owned local mass-transit systems are not entitled to immunity under *535 National League of Cities. 44 Fed. Reg. 75630 (1979), codified as 29 CFR § 775.3(b)(3) (1984).

On November 17, 1981, the District Court granted SAMTA's motion for summary judgment and denied the Secretary's and Garcia's cross-motion for partial summary judgment. Without further explanation, the District Court ruled that "local public mass transit systems (including [SAMTA]) constitute integral operations in areas of traditional governmental functions" under National League of Cities. App. D to Juris. Statement in No. 82-1913, p. 24a. The Secretary and Garcia both appealed directly to this Court pursuant to 28 U. S. C. § 1252. During the pendency of those appeals, Transportation Union v. Long Island R. Co., 455 U. S. 678 (1982), was decided. In that case, the Court ruled that commuter rail service provided by the state-owned Long Island Rail Road did not constitute a "traditional governmental function" and hence did not enjoy constitutional immunity, under National League of Cities, from the requirements of the Railway Labor Act. Thereafter, it vacated the District Court's judgment in the present cases and remanded them for further consideration in the light of Long Island. 457 U. S. 1102 (1982).

On remand, the District Court adhered to its original view and again entered judgment for SAMTA. 557 F. Supp. 445 (1983). The court looked first to what it regarded as the "historical reality" of state involvement in mass transit. It recognized that States not always had owned and operated mass-transit systems, but concluded that they had engaged in a longstanding pattern of public regulation, and that this regulatory tradition gave rise to an "inference of sovereignty." Id., at 447-448. The court next looked to the record of federal involvement in the field and concluded that constitutional immunity would not result in an erosion of federal authority with respect to state-owned mass-transit systems, because many federal statutes themselves contain exemptions for States and thus make the withdrawal of federal *536 regulatory power over public mass-transit systems a supervening federal policy. Id., at 448-450. Although the Federal Government's authority over employee wages under the FLSA obviously would be eroded, Congress had not asserted any interest in the wages of public mass-transit employees until 1966 and hence had not established a longstanding federal interest in the field, in contrast to the century-old federal regulatory presence in the railroad industry found significant for the decision in Long Island. Finally, the court compared mass transit to the list of functions identified as constitutionally immune in National League of Cities and concluded that it did not differ from those functions in any material respect. The court stated: "If transit is to be distinguished from the exempt [National League of Cities] functions it will have to be by identifying a traditional state function in the same way pornography is sometimes identified: someone knows it when they see it, but they can't describe it." 557 F. Supp., at 453.^[4]

The Secretary and Garcia again took direct appeals from the District Court's judgment. We noted probable jurisdiction. 464 U. S. 812 (1983). After initial argument, the cases were restored to our calendar for reargument, and the parties were requested to brief and argue the following additional question:

"Whether or not the principles of the Tenth Amendment as set forth in National League of Cities v. Usery, 426 U. S. 833 (1976), should be reconsidered?" 468 U. S. 1213 (1984).

Reargument followed in due course.

*537 II

Appellees have not argued that SAMTA is immune from regulation under the FLSA on the ground that it is a local transit system engaged in intrastate commercial activity. In a practical sense, SAMTA's operations might well be characterized as "local." Nonetheless, it long has been settled that Congress' authority under the Commerce Clause extends to intrastate economic activities that affect interstate commerce. See, e. g., Hodel v. Virginia Surface Mining & Recl. Assn., 452 U. S. 264, 276-277 (1981); Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc. v. United States, 379 U. S. 241, 258 (1964); Wickard v. Filburn, 317 U. S. 111, 125 (1942); United States v. Darby, 312 U. S. 100 (1941). Were SAMTA a privately owned and operated enterprise, it could not credibly argue that Congress exceeded the bounds of its Commerce Clause powers in prescribing minimum wages and overtime rates for SAMTA's employees. Any constitutional exemption from the requirements of the FLSA therefore must rest on SAMTA's status as a governmental entity rather than on the "local" nature of its operations.

The prerequisites for governmental immunity under National League of Cities were summarized by this Court in Hodel, supra. Under that summary, four conditions must be satisfied before a state activity may be deemed immune from a particular federal regulation under the Commerce Clause. First, it is said that the federal statute at issue must regulate "the `States as States.' " Second, the statute must "address matters that are indisputably `attribute[s] of state sovereignty.' " Third, state compliance with the federal obligation must "directly impair [the States'] ability `to structure integral operations in areas of traditional governmental functions.' " Finally, the relation of state and federal interests must not be such that "the nature of the federal interest . . . justifies state submission." 452 U. S., at 287-288, and n. 29, quoting National League of Cities, 426 U. S., at 845, 852, 854.

*538 The controversy in the present cases has focused on the third Hotel requirement — that the challenged federal statute trench on "traditional governmental functions." The District Court voiced a common concern: "Despite the abundance of adjectives, identifying which particular state functions are immune remains difficult." 557 F. Supp., at 447. Just how troublesome the task has been is revealed by the results reached in other federal cases. Thus, courts have held that regulating ambulance services, Gold Cross Ambulance v. City of Kansas City, 538 F. Supp. 956, 967-969 (WD Mo. 1982), aff'd on other grounds, 705 F. 2d 1005 (CA8 1983), cert. pending, No. 83-138; licensing automobile drivers, United States v. Best, 573 F. 2d 1095, 1102-1103 (CA9 1978); operating a municipal airport, Amersbach v. City of Cleveland, 598 F. 2d 1033, 1037-1038 (CA6 1979); performing solid waste disposal, Hybud Equipment Corp. v. City of Akron, 654 F. 2d 1187, 1196 (CA6 1981); and operating a highway authority, Molina-Estrada v. Puerto Rico Highway Authority, 680 F. 2d 841, 845-846 (CA1 1982), are functions protected under National League of Cities. At the same time, courts have held that issuance of industrial development bonds, Woods v. Homes and Structures of Pittsburg, Kansas, Inc., 489 F. Supp. 1270, 1296-1297 (Kan. 1980); regulation of intrastate natural gas sales, Oklahoma ex rel. Derryberry v. FERC, 494 F. Supp. 636, 657 (WD Okla. 1980), aff'd, 661 F. 2d 832 (CA10 1981), cert. denied sub nom. Texas v. FERC, 457 U. S. 1105 (1982); regulation of traffic on public roads, Friends of the Earth v. Carey, 552 F. 2d 25, 38 (CA2), cert. denied, 434 U. S. 902 (1977); regulation of air transportation, Hughes Air Corp. v. Public Utilities Comm'n of Cal., 644 F. 2d 1334, 1340-1341 (CA9 1981); operation of a telephone system, Puerto Rico Tel. Co. v. FCC, 553 F. 2d 694, 700-701 (CA1 1977); leasing and sale of natural gas, Public Service Co. of N. C. v. FERC, 587 F. 2d 716, 721 (CA5), cert. denied sub nom. Louisiana v. FERC, 444 U. S. 879 (1979); operation of a mental health facility, Williams v. Eastside Mental *539 Health Center, Inc., 669 F. 2d 671, 680-681 (CA11), cert. denied, 459 U. S. 976 (1982); and provision of in-house domestic services for the aged and handicapped, Bonnette v. California Health and Welfare Agency, 704 F. 2d 1465, 1472 (CA9 1983), are not entitled to immunity. We find it difficult, if not impossible, to identify an organizing principle that places each of the cases in the first group on one side of a line and each of the cases in the second group on the other side. The constitutional distinction between licensing drivers and regulating traffic, for example, or between operating a highway authority and operating a mental health facility, is elusive at best.

Thus far, this Court itself has made little headway in defining the scope of the governmental functions deemed protected under National League of Cities. In that case the Court set forth examples of protected and unprotected functions, see 426 U. S., at 851, 854, n. 18, but provided no explanation of how those examples were identified. The only other case in which the Court has had occasion to address the problem is Long Island.^[5] We there observed: "The determination of whether a federal law impairs a state's authority with respect to `areas of traditional [state] functions' may at times be a difficult one." 455 U. S., at 684, quoting National League of Cities, 426 U. S., at 852. The accuracy of that statement is demonstrated by this Court's own difficulties in Long Island is developing a workable standard for "traditional governmental functions." We relied in large part there on "the historical reality that the operation of railroads is not among the functions traditionally performed by state and local governments," but we *540 simultaneously disavowed "a static historical view of state functions generally immune from federal regulation." 455 U. S., at 686 (first emphasis added; second emphasis in original). We held that the inquiry into a particular function's "traditional" nature was merely a means of determining whether the federal statute at issue unduly handicaps "basic state prerogatives," id., at 686-687, but we did not offer an explanation of what makes one state function a "basic prerogative" and another function not basic. Finally, having disclaimed a rigid reliance on the historical pedigree of state involvement in a particular area, we nonetheless found it appropriate to emphasize the extended historical record of federal involvement in the field of rail transportation. Id., at 687-689.

Many constitutional standards involve "undoubte[d] . . . gray areas," Fry v. United States, 421 U. S. 542, 558 (1975) (dissenting opinion), and, despite the difficulties that this Court and other courts have encountered so far, it normally might be fair to venture the assumption that case-by-case development would lead to a workable standard for determining whether a particular governmental function should be immune from federal regulation under the Commerce Clause. A further cautionary note is sounded, however, by the Court's experience in the related field of state immunity from federal taxation. In South Carolina v. United States, 199 U. S. 437 (1905), the Court held for the first time that the state tax immunity recognized in Collector v. Day, 11 Wall. 113 (1871), extended only to the "ordinary" and "strictly governmental" instrumentalities of state governments and not to instrumentalities "used by the State in the carrying on of an ordinary private business." 199 U. S., at 451, 461. While the Court applied the distinction outlined in South Carolina for the following 40 years, at no time during that period did the Court develop a consistent formulation of the kinds of governmental functions that were entitled to immunity. The Court identified the protected functions at various times as "essential," "usual," "traditional," or "strictly governmental."^[6]*541 While "these differences in phraseology . . . must not be too literally contradistinguished," Brush v. Commissioner, 300 U. S. 352, 362 (1937), they reflect an inability to specify precisely what aspects of a governmental function made it necessary to the "unimpaired existence" of the States. Collector v. Day, 11 Wall., at 127. Indeed, the Court ultimately chose "not, by an attempt to formulate any general test, [to] risk embarrassing the decision of cases [concerning] activities of a different kind which may arise in the future." Brush v. Commissioner, 300 U. S., at 365.

If these tax-immunity cases had any common thread, it was in the attempt to distinguish between "governmental" and "proprietary" functions.^[7] To say that the distinction between *542 "governmental" and "proprietary" proved to be stable, however, would be something of an overstatement. In 1911, for example, the Court declared that the provision of a municipal water supply "is no part of the essential governmental functions of a State." Flint v. Stone Tracy Co., 220 U. S. 107, 172. Twenty-six years later, without any intervening change in the applicable legal standards, the Court simply rejected its earlier position and decided that the provision of a municipal water supply was immune from federal taxation as an essential governmental function, even though municipal waterworks long had been operated for profit by private industry. Brush v. Commissioner, 300 U. S., at 370-373. At the same time that the Court was holding a municipal water supply to be immune from federal taxes, it had held that a state-run commuter rail system was not immune. Helvering v. Powers, 293 U. S. 214 (1934). Justice Black, in Helvering v. Gerhardt, 304 U. S. 405, 427 (1938), was moved to observe: "An implied constitutional distinction which taxes income of an officer of a state-operated transportation system and exempts income of the manager of a municipal water works system manifests the uncertainty created by the `essential' and `non-essential' test" (concurring opinion). It was this uncertainty and instability that led the Court shortly thereafter, in New York v. United States, 326 U. S. 572 (1946), unanimously to conclude that the distinction between "governmental" and "proprietary" functions was "untenable" and must be abandoned. See id., at 583 (opinion of Frankfurter, J., joined by Rutledge, J.); id., at 586 (Stone, C. J., concurring, joined by Reed, Murphy, and Burton, JJ.); id., at 590-596 (Douglas, J., dissenting, joined by Black J.). See also Massachusetts v. United States, 435 U. S. 444, 457, and n. 14 (1978) (plurality opinion); Case v. Bowles, 327 U. S. 92, 101 (1946).

*543 Even during the heyday of the governmental/proprietary distinction in intergovernmental tax-immunity doctrine the Court never explained the constitutional basis for that distinction. In South Carolina, it expressed its concern that unlimited state immunity from federal taxation would allow the States to undermine the Federal Government's tax base by expanding into previously private sectors of the economy. See 199 U. S., at 454-455.^[8] Although the need to reconcile state and federal interests obviously demanded that state immunity have some limiting principle, the Court did not try to justify the particular result it reached; it simply concluded that a "line [must] be drawn," id., at 456, and proceeded to draw that line. The Court's elaborations in later cases, such as the assertion in Ohio v. Helvering, 292 U. S. 360, 369 (1934), that "[w]hen a state enters the market place seeking customers it divests itself of its quasi sovereignty pro tanto," sound more of ipse dixit than reasoned explanation. This inability to give principled content to the distinction between "governmental" and "proprietary," no less significantly than its unworkability, led the Court to abandon the distinction in New York v. United States.

The distinction the Court discarded as unworkable in the field of tax immunity has proved no more fruitful in the field of regulatory immunity under the Commerce Clause. Neither do any of the alternative standards that might be employed to distinguish between protected and unprotected governmental functions appear manageable. We rejected the possibility of making immunity turn on a purely historical standard of "tradition" in Long Island, and properly so. The most obvious defect of a historical approach to state immunity is that it prevents a court from accommodating changes in the historical functions of States, changes that have resulted *544 in a number of once-private functions like education being assumed by the States and their subdivisions.^[9] At the same time, the only apparent virtue of a rigorous historical standard, namely, its promise of a reasonably objective measure for state immunity, is illusory. Reliance on history as an organizing principle results in line-drawing of the most arbitrary sort; the genesis of state governmental functions stretches over a historical continuum from before the Revolution to the present, and courts would have to decide by fiat precisely how longstanding a pattern of state involvement had to be for federal regulatory authority to be defeated.^[10]

*545 A nonhistorical standard for selecting immune governmental functions is likely to be just as unworkable as is a historical standard. The goal of identifying "uniquely" governmental functions, for example, has been rejected by the Court in the field of government tort liability in part because the notion of a "uniquely" governmental function is unmanageable. See Indian Towing Co. v. United States, 350 U. S. 61, 64-68 (1955); see also Lafayette v. Louisiana Power & Light Co., 435 U. S. 389, 433 (1978) (dissenting opinion). Another possibility would be to confine immunity to "necessary" governmental services, that is, services that would be provided inadequately or not at all unless the government provided them. Cf. Flint v. Stone Tracy Co., 220 U. S., at 172. The set of services that fits into this category, however, may well be negligible. The fact that an unregulated market produces less of some service than a State deems desirable does not mean that the State itself must provide the service; in most if not all cases, the State can "contract out" by hiring private firms to provide the service or simply by providing subsidies to existing suppliers. It also is open to question how well equipped courts are to make this kind of determination about the workings of economic markets.

We believe, however, that there is a more fundamental problem at work here, a problem that explains why the Court was never able to provide a basis for the governmental/proprietary distinction in the intergovernmental tax-immunity cases and why an attempt to draw similar distinctions with respect to federal regulatory authority under National League of Cities is unlikely to succeed regardless of how the distinctions are phrased. The problem is that neither the governmental/proprietary distinction nor any *546 other that purports to separate out important governmental functions can be faithful to the role of federalism in a democratic society. The essence of our federal system is that within the realm of authority left open to them under the Constitution, the States must be equally free to engage in any activity that their citizens choose for the common weal, no matter how unorthodox or unnecessary anyone else — including the judiciary — deems state involvement to be. Any rule of state immunity that looks to the "traditional," "integral," or "necessary" nature of governmental functions inevitably invites an unelected federal judiciary to make decisions about which state policies it favors and which ones it dislikes. "The science of government . . . is the science of experiment," Anderson v. Dunn, 6 Wheat, 204, 226 (1821), and the States cannot serve as laboratories for social and economic experiment, see New State Ice Co. v. Liebmann, 285 U. S. 262, 311 (1932) (Brandeis, J., dissenting), if they must pay an added price when they meet the changing needs of their citizenry by taking up functions that an earlier day and a different society left in private hands. In the words of Justice Black:

"There is not, and there cannot be, any unchanging line of demarcation between essential and non-essential governmental functions. Many governmental functions of today have at some time in the past been nongovernmental. The genius of our government provides that, within the sphere of constitutional action, the people — acting not through the courts but through their elected legislative representatives — have the power to determine as conditions demand, what services and functions the public welfare requires." Helvering v. Gerhardt, 304 U. S., at 427 (concurring opinion).

We therefore now reject, as unsound in principle and unworkable in practice, a rule of state immunity from federal regulation that turns on a judicial appraisal of whether a *547 particular governmental function is "integral" or "traditional." Any such rule leads to inconsistent results at the same time that it disserves principles of democratic self-governance, and it breeds inconsistency precisely because it is divorced from those principles. If there are to be limits on the Federal Government's power to interfere with state functions — as undoubtedly there are — we must look elsewhere to find them. We accordingly return to the underlying issue that confronted this Court in National League of Cities — the manner in which the Constitution insulates States from the reach of Congress' power under the Commerce Clause.

III

The central theme of National League of Cities was that the States occupy a special position in our constitutional system and that the scope of Congress' authority under the Commerce Clause must reflect that position. Of course, the Commerce Clause by its specific language does not provide any special limitation on Congress' ac