Sure. My point is the federal government can take quick action, or it can decide to pass things off to the states.
Candy Lightner lost a daughter to a drunk driver in 1980, formed MADD, and got the National Minimum Drinking Age Act passed by 1984.
Why shouldn’t the federal government not have just left it up to the states to fight over it for the rest of time? Because they felt the need to act quickly, and they had the right.
When it comes to gay rights, they act like they have no business telling states what to do.
Except it didn’t work that way. The federal government used extortion based on federal highway funds as a run-around offense. My home state of Louisiana still had a 100% legal drinking age of 18 up until 1997. When I was in college in New Orleans (1991 -1995) we could buy and drink as minors everywhere freely and we were catered to. Other states like Wisconsin also have strange drinking laws for minors. It was still a state issue but the stakes were higher for some states than others so they didn’t bother getting creative with their laws.
Yeah, I lived in Wisconsin & Minnesota at the time. I got grandfathered. I could drink at 18, then drink at 19, then 20, then 21. I was good to go. I just happened to be the age they were stepping it up to, year by year.
The feds still imposed its will on the states, extortion via highway funds or not. The feds can, and do pass national laws when they want, and they can do it quickly.
There are no such things as states’ rights. States don’t have rights, they have powers. Individuals have rights. There are things the federal government has the power to regulate; things that state governments have the power to regulate and the federal government may not; and things that no level of government may regulate because individuals have a right to them.
The reason people refer to it as “states’ rights” is to try an endow it with a degree of mystical respect.