# South Carolina v. Baker

> Supreme Court of the United States · June 13, 1988 · 485 U.S. 505

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9431248

## Case

- **Full name:** South Carolina v. Baker, Secretary of the Treasury
- **Court:** Supreme Court of the United States
- **Decided:** June 13, 1988
- **Citations:** 485 U.S. 505; 108 S. Ct. 1355; 99 L. Ed. 2d 592; 1988 U.S. LEXIS 1873
- **Precedential status:** Published
- **Opinion:** Concurrence by Scalia
- **Judges:** Brennan, White, Marshall, Blackmun, Stevens, Scalia, Rehnquist, O'Connor, Kennedy
- **Cited by:** 206 later opinions in the Frix Law Library

## Citator (automated)

- No negative treatment found by the automated citator. That is not the same as a confirmation that the case is good law; read the citing cases.
- Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9431248

## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction)

- stating that the Supreme Court has “completely foreclosed any claim that the nondiscriminatory imposition of costs on private entities that pass them on to States . . . unconstitutionally burdens state . . . functions”
- holding that a federal law removing a tax exemption from state-issued bonds did not violate Intergovernmental Tax Immunity because the tax was “imposed on and collected from bondholders,” and not from the states
- stating that the requirement that bearer bonds be registered in order to be eligible for a federal income tax exemption applied to “local governments, the Federal Government, [and] private corporations”
- stating that "Garcia left open the possibility that some extraordinary defects in the national political process might render congressional regulation of state activities invalid, . . . ."
- holding that a federal tax law was constitutional where it “regulates state activities” and does not “seek to control or influence the manner in which States regulate private parties”

## Opinion text

Justice Scalia,
concurring in part and concurring in the judgment.
I join in the Court’s judgment, and in its opinion except for Part II. I do not join the latter because, as observed by The Chief Justice, post, at 529-530, it unnecessarily casts doubt upon FERC v. Mississippi, 456 U. S. 742 (1982), and because it misdescribes the holding in Garcia v. San Antonio Metropolitan Transit Authority, 469 U. S. 528 (1985). I do not read Garcia as adopting — in fact I read it as explicitly disclaiming — the proposition attributed to it in today’s opinion, ante, at 512-513, that the “national political process” is the States’ only constitutional protection, and that nothing except the demonstration of “some extraordinary defects” in the operation of that process can justify judicial relief. We said in Garcia : “These cases do not require us to identify or define what affirmative limits the constitutional structure might impose on federal action affecting the States under the Commerce Clause. See Coyle v. Oklahoma, 221 U. S. 559 (1911).” 469 U. S., at 556 (emphasis added). I agree only that that structure does not prohibit what the Federal Government has done here.

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Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9431248. Public record. Not legal advice.