Legal Brief: South Dakota v. Dole
Under South Dakota law, persons 19 years old or older were permitted to purchase beer that contained up to 3.2% alcohol. However, Congress enacted Title 23 U.S.C. 158 in 1984 which directed the Secretary of Transportation to withhold a percentage of otherwise allocable federal highway funds from States in which the legal age to purchase or have public possession of any alcoholic beverage is less than twenty-one years of age. In response, South Dakota sued in Federal District Court for a declaratory judgment that Section 158 violated the Twenty-first Amendment and the constitutional limitations on congressional exercise of the spending power provided in the Constitution. The Federal Court rejected the State’s claims, and the Court of Appeals affirmed the claims. As a result of this, the legal question presented was does Section 158 violate the Twenty-first Amendment and the spending clause? Although Congress, in view of the Twenty-first Amendment, may lack the power to impose directly a national minimum drinking age, the Court held that Section 158’s indirect encouragement of state action to obtain uniformity in the States’ drinking ages is a valid use of the spending power. Due to the power of Congress provided by the Co
nstitution to “lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts, and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defense and general Welfare of the United States,” Congress has, on numerous occasions, enacted the power “to further broad policy objectives by conditioning receipt of federal moneys upon compliance by the recipient with federal statutory and administrative directives.” In the case of United States v. Butler, the court found that “the power of Congress to authorize expenditure of public moneys for public purposes is not limited by the direct grants of legislative power found in the Constitution.” As a result, objectives not included within Article I may be acquired through the use of the spending power and the conditional grant of federal funds. This decision provides Congress with the power to indirectly encourage the States to obtain uniformity in the States’ drinking ages through the spending power. Included in the spending power is the right of Congress to attach conditions on the receipt of federal funds. However, exercise of the power is dependent on restrictions including that in order to exercise this power it must be in pursuit of the “general welfare.” Section 158 is co
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Approximate Word count = 818
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)
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