Quote:
Originally Posted by Anikdote
They actually do have the right to legislate this because of the interstate commerce clause, but the rest of the stuff you got right.
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Actually their "regulation" of the 21 drinking age is not directly a result of their power to regulate interstate commerce. It was more like extortion... They used the highway funds to more or less force all of the states to establish 21 age limit. They said they would not give the funds unless the states changed the age to 21.
If the government was actually using their constitutional power to enforce this age limit, they would have passed a law that overroad the state laws. But they did not have that power. Instead they had to find a way to force the states to do it. Illegal? Probably not. Example of them using force outside the scope of their constitutional powers? Absolutely.