Tenth Amendment rights are the powers the Constitution left with the states and with individual citizens instead of handing them to Washington. Ratified in 1791, the amendment sets a default rule for the whole constitutional system: if the Constitution did not specifically give a power to the federal government, that power was never the federal government’s to use. It is the reason states run their own schools, license their own doctors, and write most of the criminal code, and the reason the Supreme Court keeps hearing cases about whether Congress has stepped past its lane.
What the Amendment Actually Says
The full text is one sentence: “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.”1Constitution Annotated. U.S. Constitution – Tenth Amendment
The amendment does not create new rights or new powers. It works as a structural backstop, confirming that federal authority has boundaries. When you want to know whether Congress can do something, you look for a specific authorization somewhere in the Constitution. If you cannot find one, the Tenth Amendment says the answer is no.
What the Federal Government Is Allowed to Do
The Constitution spells out federal power primarily in Article I, Section 8. That section lists roughly eighteen categories of congressional authority, including taxing, regulating interstate commerce, coining money, establishing post offices, declaring war, raising armies, and creating lower federal courts.2Constitution Annotated. Article I Section 8 A final clause, the Necessary and Proper Clause, lets Congress pass laws needed to carry out those listed powers. Beyond these grants, the federal government has no general authority to legislate whatever it wants.
State governments run on the opposite premise. They do not need constitutional permission to act. They start with broad governing authority and are limited only by specific constitutional prohibitions. Washington starts at zero and gains only what the Constitution affirmatively grants. The Tenth Amendment makes that contrast explicit.
What Powers the States Keep
The broad residual authority states hold is usually called “police power,” even though it has little to do with law enforcement in the everyday sense. It refers to a state’s inherent ability to pass laws promoting public health, safety, morals, and general welfare. The Supreme Court has confirmed that this general police power belongs to the states, not the federal government, and the Tenth Amendment is what makes that division clear.3Legal Information Institute. Police Powers
Police power covers most of the laws that touch daily life. States run public school systems and decide what gets taught. They license doctors, lawyers, engineers, and electricians, and they set the standards those professionals must meet. They regulate land use through zoning, set speed limits, set the drinking age for in-state purchases, and define most criminal offenses. None of those subjects appear in Congress’s enumerated powers, which is exactly why they stay with the states.
States also carry the primary authority to respond to public health emergencies. They can impose quarantine and isolation orders, require vaccinations, and mandate inspections to prevent the spread of disease. That authority traces back to English common law principles allowing private rights to be limited when necessary to protect the broader community.4National Center for Biotechnology Information. Public Health Strategy and the Police Powers of the State
Where Federal Power Reaches Into State Territory Anyway
If the Tenth Amendment is the fence around federal power, the Commerce Clause is the gate that keeps getting wider. Article I, Section 8 gives Congress the power to “regulate Commerce . . . among the several States,” and over the past century the Supreme Court has read that language to cover an enormous range of activity. The tension between the Commerce Clause and the Tenth Amendment is the central fight of American federalism.
The case that set the modern baseline is Wickard v. Filburn (1942). An Ohio farmer grew wheat on his own land for his own livestock. He exceeded his federal allotment and was fined. The Supreme Court upheld the fine, reasoning that even wheat grown for personal use affects interstate commerce when you aggregate all the farmers doing the same thing. Growing your own feed means buying less on the open market, which affects supply and prices nationally.5Justia U.S. Supreme Court. Wickard v. Filburn, 317 U.S. 111 That aggregation principle gave Congress a long regulatory reach.
The Court extended the same logic in Gonzales v. Raich (2005), holding that Congress could prohibit homegrown marijuana even in a state that had legalized medical use. Federal commerce power, the Court said, is “superior to that of the States to provide for the welfare or necessities of their inhabitants,” and state legalization could not shrink Congress’s authority under the Commerce Clause.6Justia U.S. Supreme Court. Gonzales v. Raich, 545 U.S. 1
The Commerce Clause does have a ceiling. In United States v. Lopez (1995), the Court struck down a federal law banning gun possession near schools, finding that carrying a firearm in a school zone was not economic activity with a substantial connection to interstate commerce. Accepting the government’s reasoning, the Court warned, “would convert Congress’s commerce power into a general police power of the sort retained by the states.”7Constitution Annotated. Amdt10.4.4 Commerce Clause and Tenth Amendment It was the first time in decades the Court told Congress it had gone too far under the Commerce Clause.
The practical takeaway: Congress can regulate almost any economic activity with even a tenuous connection to interstate markets. When it reaches for something that is not economic at all, the Tenth Amendment can push back.
The Anti-Commandeering Doctrine
Even where the federal government has authority to regulate an area, it cannot force state officials to do the regulating. This is the anti-commandeering doctrine, and it is one of the Tenth Amendment’s sharpest teeth. The Supreme Court built the doctrine through three cases.
Congress Cannot Order State Legislatures to Pass Laws
In New York v. United States (1992), Congress tried to solve the problem of radioactive waste disposal by requiring states that failed to arrange disposal to “take title” to the waste and accept liability. The Supreme Court struck that provision down, holding that “Congress may not commandeer the States’ legislative processes by directly compelling them to enact and enforce a federal regulatory program.”8Justia U.S. Supreme Court. New York v. United States, 505 U.S. 144 Congress can offer incentives and it can give states a choice between federal oversight and their own plan, but it cannot simply order a state legislature to enact a particular law.
Congress Cannot Draft State Officers Into Federal Programs
Printz v. United States (1997) extended the same principle to state executive officials. The Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act required local law enforcement to run background checks on handgun purchasers while the federal system was still being built. The Court struck down that requirement, holding that “Congress cannot circumvent that prohibition by conscripting the State’s officers directly.”9Legal Information Institute. Printz v. United States, 521 U.S. 898 No balancing test, no weighing of costs and benefits. The federal government cannot issue directives to state officers requiring them to administer a federal program.
Congress Cannot Forbid States From Changing Their Own Laws
The most recent expansion came in Murphy v. NCAA (2018). A federal law called PASPA had barred states from authorizing sports gambling. The Court struck it down, ruling that anti-commandeering applies whether Congress is ordering a state to do something or forbidding it from doing something. “The distinction between compelling a State to enact legislation and prohibiting a State from enacting new laws is an empty one.”10Supreme Court of the United States. Murphy v. National Collegiate Athletic Assn. Congress cannot install itself as a veto over state legislative choices.
The doctrine is why the federal government must build and staff its own enforcement apparatus. If Washington wants background checks on gun buyers, it needs a federal system (which is now the NICS database). If it wants environmental standards enforced, it can preempt state law or offer funding with strings, but it cannot hand the work to state employees and walk away.
Federal Money With Strings Attached
Because the federal government cannot order states around directly, it often uses money instead. Congress attaches conditions to federal grants: take the funds, follow these rules. The Supreme Court has allowed that approach but set boundaries on when financial pressure crosses into coercion.
In South Dakota v. Dole (1987), the Court upheld a federal law that withheld a small percentage of highway funding from states that set their drinking age below 21. The Court laid out four conditions any spending condition must meet: the spending must serve the general welfare, the conditions must be stated unambiguously so states know what they are agreeing to, the conditions must relate to the federal interest in the program, and no condition can require a state to violate other constitutional provisions.11Justia U.S. Supreme Court. South Dakota v. Dole, 483 U.S. 203
The critical limit came in National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius (2012), the Affordable Care Act case. Congress had expanded Medicaid eligibility and threatened to strip all existing Medicaid funding from states that refused to participate. The Court said that went too far. The amount at stake, roughly $233 billion or about 22% of all state expenditures combined, turned an incentive into a “gun to the head.” The highway funding in Dole had amounted to roughly 0.19% of state spending.12Justia U.S. Supreme Court. National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, 567 U.S. 519 Congress can encourage states with new money. It cannot threaten to yank existing funding that states have come to depend on as a way to force compliance with an entirely new program.
When Federal Law Wins Anyway
The Tenth Amendment does not make state law supreme. When the Constitution does grant power to Washington, the Supremacy Clause of Article VI says federal law wins any conflict with state law. This is called preemption. Congress sometimes states explicitly that federal law overrides state law in a particular area. Other times, federal regulation is so comprehensive that courts conclude Congress intended to occupy the entire field. And sometimes a state law is preempted simply because complying with both federal and state requirements is impossible.
The practical question in most modern federalism disputes is not whether the Tenth Amendment exists, but whether Congress actually had the constitutional authority it claims. If the answer is yes, federal law controls. If the answer is no, the power was reserved to the states or to the people all along.
Where These Fights Are Happening Now
Marijuana
As of early 2026, 40 states have legalized medical marijuana, and 24 states plus the District of Columbia have legalized recreational use. Marijuana remains a Schedule I controlled substance under federal law. The federal government has largely chosen not to enforce its prohibition against individuals complying with state law, and Congress has reinforced that hands-off approach through annual appropriations riders that prohibit the Department of Justice from spending money to prevent states from implementing their medical marijuana programs.13Congress.gov. The Federal Status of Marijuana and the Policy Gap with States The DEA has nonetheless maintained that marijuana possession, cultivation, and trafficking remain federal crimes regardless of state law. The result is a legal landscape where the same conduct can be fully legal under state law and fully illegal under federal law, a tension the Tenth Amendment frames but does not resolve, because the Supreme Court has already held that Congress’s Commerce Clause power reaches marijuana even when grown at home for personal use.
Sanctuary Jurisdictions
Anti-commandeering sits at the center of the ongoing fight over sanctuary cities. Some state and local governments have adopted policies limiting how much their employees cooperate with federal immigration enforcement. The federal government has repeatedly tried to withhold grant funding from those jurisdictions, and federal courts have repeatedly blocked those attempts. The logic tracks the doctrine above: Washington cannot conscript state officers into enforcing federal law, and conditioning funding on cooperation may exceed the spending-power limits if the conditions are ambiguous, unrelated to the grant’s purpose, or coercive in scale.
Second Amendment Sanctuary Laws
The same framework has produced a mirror-image dispute. A growing number of states have passed laws declaring they will not use state resources to enforce certain federal firearms regulations. Those laws rely directly on Printz: the federal government cannot compel state officers to administer a federal program. As long as a state is refusing to participate rather than actively obstructing federal agents, the Tenth Amendment protects that choice. The federal government retains the authority to enforce its own gun laws using federal agents.
What “Or to the People” Means
The Tenth Amendment does not just protect states. Its closing phrase, “or to the people,” means that some authority was never handed to any government at all. When neither the Constitution nor a state constitution grants a particular power to a government body, that power stays with individual citizens.1Constitution Annotated. U.S. Constitution – Tenth Amendment
Courts have not used that phrase as an independent source of judicially enforceable individual rights very often. It functions more as an anchor, a reminder to every branch of government that political authority flows upward from citizens, not downward from institutions. The people delegated limited powers to the federal government through the Constitution, reserved broad powers to the states, and kept the rest for themselves.