I'm not a constitutional scholar on this point by any means, but there are SCOTUS opinions discussing this relationship. Here's a couple of excerpts.DBTrek wrote:I'm still fuzzy on why the 10th Amendment is a sticking point at all.
The Federal government isn't forcing cities not to be sanctuary cities.
Ergo this is not being violated:
“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
Likewise, the Federal government is not required to send billions of dollars of pork to states either. So to a layman the argument looks like this:
Now, sure . . . Congress controls the purse strings. So I'm not suggesting the president can single-handedly yank the funding himself. But the idea that not handing billions of federal pork dollars to a state somehow violates the 10th? What am I missing? It makes no sense.
- Trump: We'll suspend Federal aid from sanctuary cities until they feel like complying with our immigration laws.
Sanctuary Cities: You can't! That violates the 10th Amendment.
Trump: Nope. Not giving you money isn't the federal government taking powers it hasn't been granted. You all can do what you want, but we're not paying for it. We're certainly within our rights to spend federal dollars as we choose.
The Constitution empowers Congress to "lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts, and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States." Art. I, § 8, cl. 1. Incident to this power, Congress may attach conditions on the receipt of federal funds, and has repeatedly employed the power "to further broad policy objectives by conditioning receipt of federal moneys upon compliance by the recipient with federal statutory and administrative directives." The breadth of this power was made clear in United States v. Butler, where the Court, resolving a longstanding debate over the scope of the Spending Clause, determined 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." Thus, objectives not thought to be within Article I's "enumerated legislative fields," may nevertheless be attained through the use of the spending power and the conditional grant of federal funds.
The spending power is of course not unlimited, but is instead subject to several general restrictions articulated in our cases. The first of these limitations is derived from the language of the Constitution itself: the exercise of the spending power must be in pursuit of "the general welfare." In considering whether a particular expenditure is intended to serve general public purposes, courts should defer substantially to the judgment of Congress. Second, we have required that if Congress desires to condition the States' receipt of federal funds, it "must do so unambiguously . . . , enabl[ing] the States to exercise their choice knowingly, cognizant of the consequences of their participation." Third, our cases have suggested (without significant elaboration) that conditions on federal grants might be illegitimate if they are unrelated "to the federal interest in particular national projects or programs." Finally, we have noted that other constitutional provisions may provide an independent bar to the conditional grant of federal funds.
We have also held that a perceived Tenth Amendment limitation on congressional regulation of state affairs did not comitantly limit the range of conditions legitimately placed on federal grants. In Oklahoma v. Civil Service Comm'n, the Court considered the validity of the Hatch Act insofar as it was applied to political activities of state officials whose employment was financed in whole or in part with federal funds. The State contended that an order under this provision to withhold certain federal funds unless a state official was removed invaded its sovereignty in violation of the Tenth Amendment. Though finding that "the United States is not concerned with, and has no power to regulate, local political activities as such of state officials," the Court nevertheless held that the Federal Government "does have power to fix the terms upon which its money allotments to states shall be disbursed." The Court found no violation of the State's sovereignty because the State could, and did, adopt "the 'simple expedient' of not yielding to what she urges is federal coercion. The offer of benefits to a state by the United States dependent upon cooperation by the state with federal plans, assumedly for the general welfare, is not unusual."
South Dakota v. Dole, 483 U.S. 203 (U.S. 1987) (citations omitted).
https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federa ... /case.html
{O}ur cases have recognized limits on Congress's power under the Spending Clause to secure state compliance with federal objectives. “We have repeatedly characterized . . . Spending Clause legislation as 'much in the nature of a contract.' The legitimacy of Congress's exercise of the spending power “thus rests on whether the State voluntarily and knowingly accepts the terms of the 'contract.' Respecting this limitation is critical to ensuring that Spending Clause legislation does not undermine the status of the States as independent sovereigns in our federal system. That system “rests on what might at first seem a counterintuitive insight, that 'freedom is enhanced by the creation of two governments, not one.' For this reason, “the Constitution has never been understood to confer upon Congress the ability to require the States to govern according to Congress' instructions.” Otherwise the two-government system established by the Framers would give way to a system that vests power in one central government, and individual liberty would suffer.That insight has led this Court to strike down federal legislation that commandeers a State's legislative or administrative apparatus for federal purposes. Congress may use its spending power to create incentives for States to act in accordance with federal policies. But when “pressure turns into compulsion,” the legislation runs contrary to our system of federalism. “[T]he Constitution simply does not give Congress the authority to require the States to regulate.” That is true whether Congress directly commands a State to regulate or indirectly coerces a State to adopt a federal regulatory system as its own.Permitting the Federal Government to force the States to implement a federal program would threaten the political accountability key to our federal system. “[W]here the Federal Government directs the States to regulate, it may be state officials who will bear the brunt of public disapproval, while the federal officials who devised the regulatory program may remain insulated from the electoral ramifications of their decision.” Spending Clause programs do not pose this danger when a State has a legitimate choice whether to accept the federal conditions in exchange for federal funds. In such a situation, state officials can fairly be held politically accountable for choosing to accept or refuse the federal offer. But when the State has no choice, the Federal Government can achieve its objectives without accountability, just as in New York and Printz. Indeed, this danger is heightened when Congress acts under the Spending Clause, because Congress can use that power to implement federal policy it could not impose directly under its enumerated powers.We addressed such concerns in Steward Machine. That case involved a federal tax on employers that was abated if the businesses paid into a state unemployment plan that met certain federally specified conditions. An employer sued, alleging that the tax was impermissibly “driv[ing] the state legislatures under the whip of economic pressure into the enactment of unemployment compensation laws at the bidding of the central government.” We acknowledged the danger that the Federal Government might employ its taxing power to exert a “power akin to undue influence” upon the States. But we observed that Congress adopted the challenged tax and abatement program to channel money to the States that would otherwise have gone into the Federal Treasury for use in providing national unemployment services. Congress was willing to direct businesses to instead pay the money into state programs only on the condition that the money be used for the same purposes. Predicating tax abatement on a State's adoption of a particular type of unemployment legislation was therefore a means to “safeguard [the Federal Government's] own treasury.” We held that “n such circumstances, if in no others, inducement or persuasion does not go beyond the bounds of power.” In rejecting the argument that the federal law was a “weapon[ ] of coercion, destroying or impairing the autonomy of the states,” the Court noted that there was no reason to suppose that the State in that case acted other than through “her unfettered will.” Indeed, the State itself did “not offer a suggestion that in passing the unemployment law she was affected by duress.” As our decision in Steward Machine confirms, Congress may attach appropriate conditions to federal taxing and spending programs to preserve its control over the use of federal funds. In the typical case we look to the States to defend their prerogatives by adopting “the simple expedient of not yielding” to federal blandishments when they do not want to embrace the federal policies as their own. The States are separate and independent sovereigns. Sometimes they have to act like it.
Nat'l Fedn. of Indep. Bus. v. Sebelius, 567 U.S. 519 (2012) citations omitted).
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/1 ... 93c3a2.pdf
