"It's congressional power day!"

So SCOTUSblog reports: "Three cases in which congressional power was upheld against constitutional challenge, including one case (Hood) in which the SG did not even participate because of his conclusion that the statute was constitutionally indefensible."



The case I'm most interested in is Tennessee v. Lane, involving the Americans With Disabilities Act and the scope of Congress's power under the 14th Amendment (and its power to deprive states of their traditional sovereign immunity and make it possible to sue them for past damages). The Court had begun to constrain the meaning of this power back in the mid-1990s, but it's commitment to a new severity wavered last year in a case (Hibbs) that found the Family and Medical Leave Act within that power. I have an article coming out in the University of Pennsylvania Law Review on the subject (with a lot about Hibbs), and I will have a lot to say about Lane. So come back later for more about Lane (and the other congressional power cases).