More States Rebel Against Real ID Act

Spamicles writes with a link to a Lawbean post about more rebellion against the Real ID act. New Hampshire and Oklahoma have joined Montana and Washington state in passing statutes refuting the ID act's guidelines. "However, these actions could eventually lead to drivers licenses issued in these states to not be accepted as official identification when boarding airplanes or accessing federal buildings. In addition to these four states, members of the Idaho legislature intentionally left out money in the budget to comply with the Act."

Comments

Re:And states do it to municipalities

[Dausha]

"Unfunded mandates"

Unfunded mandates is the natural effect of Congress' abuse of its Spending Power. Once upon a time, Congress' power to spend was limited to spending necessary to fund its other enumerated powers. Somewhere in time (1930s?), Congress began to expand its realm and the Courts acquiessed.

Now, it is generally believed that Congress can legislate anything provided it allocates funding first (barring some Amendment violation). So, for a while Congress started funding all sorts of crazy things so it could enact laws beyond its enumerated reach. Eventually, Congress' ability to legislate overreached its ability to fund. Thus, Unfunded Mandates.

What is needed is a concerted challenge in SCOTUS to return Congress to its legitimate role of legislating within its enumerated powers, and spending within those powers.

The net effect is lower federal taxes.

State legislatures, conversely, have no enumerated power limitations (in the U.S. Const. anyway). So, they can legislate all the social programs, etc. you want. Local officials locally responsible.

Perhaps Congress could legitimately advocate for certain policies (e.g. Real ID), but it could not use money or the scent of money to enforce it. States have successfully legislated uniform reforms (Uniform Commercial Code, for example); but this is not absolute uniformity. The proper answer is State actions to make things uniform, not Congress imposing beyond its legitimate reach.

Re:What it boils down to

[Plugh]

Well let's see... NH has no sales tax, no income tax, is the only state without a mandatory seat-belt law, is constitutionally prohibited from using eminent domain for private developments, has far less regulation on trades than most other states, just a few weeks ago passed an industrial hemp bill, and a few weeks before that came within 7 votes of passing a medical marijuana bill in the House of Representatives.

But all that is missing the point; it's not to say that NH is already "free"; if it were, there'd be no point in a Free State Project, now, would there? The point is that the structure of government here is amazing open and accessible, and the culture is already liberty-oriented.

If you'd like some details about why NH was a good choice as the target state, I suggest you read this PDF.