Liquor, Legality, and Linear Regression:
The Twenty-First Amendment’s Interpretation
Alcohol, like all vices, sparks conflicts in the American legal system. Controversy has
surrounded alcohol since America’s early years. In 1792, Pennsylvania distillers revolted over a
liquor excise tax implemented by Congress. This revolt, dubbed the “Whiskey Rebellion,” was
promptly shut down by a militia led by George Washington himself. A little over 100 years later,
America entered the prohibition era, banning alcohol on the national level via the Eighteenth
Amendment–only for it to be repealed in 1933 via the Twenty-First. In 1984, Congress passed
the National Minimum Drinking Age Act, which threatened to cut federal highway funding in
states that did not raise their minimum drinking age to twenty-one. Within four years, the
minimum drinking age was twenty-one in every state.
The morality of this decision has been debated ever since. Supporters use statistics about
young adults being more likely to drink irresponsibly and drive under the influence, and
opponents argue that if an eighteen-year- old can vote and serve in the military, they should be
legally able to drink a beer. The solution to this debate doesn’t come from morals and statistics,
however. Instead, the deciding factor is whether the National Minimum Drinking Age Act
violates the second section of the Twenty-First Amendment. This question was brought to the
Supreme Court in the 1987 case South Dakota v. Dole, in which the Court ruled that the act did
not violate the Twenty-First Amendment. The lasting effects of Dole signify a landmark shift
that depicts the decline of the Twenty-First Amendment’s power, which mirrors the downward
spiral of states’ rights.
The Twenty-First Amendment has three sections. Section one repeals the Eighteenth
Amendment. Section two gives states the right to regulate alcohol importation and transportation,
and section three set the terms of the amendment’s ratification. The second section is the
component that is most often debated. In fact, the Supreme Court heard a case questioning the
Twenty-First Amendment’s power merely three years after it was ratified. In State Board of
Equalization v. Young's Market Co. (1936), the Court had to answer whether a state, here
California, could require a licensing fee to import beer within its territory. The justices ruled that
before the Twenty-First Amendment, this requirement violated the commerce clause, which
gives the federal government power to regulate interstate commerce. However, now that the
Twenty-First Amendment existed, they ruled that the only way to constrain states’ abilities to
regulate alcohol transportation and importation would be to rewrite the amendment. While the
plaintiffs claimed that the fee violated the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection clause, the
Court held that “a classification recognized by the Twenty-First Amendment cannot be deemed
forbidden by the Fourteenth.”
The National Minimum Drinking Age Act isn’t the only time the federal government has
used the federal highway fund to leverage states into complying with national standards. In 1974,
President Richard Nixon signed the National Maximum Speed Law, in which states who didn’t
set their maximum speed limits to fifty-five miles per hour were subject to a cut in federal
highway funds. While this act attempted to save gasoline due to the 1973 Oil Crisis, it only
decreased fuel consumption by roughly one percent–an amount that could have been conserved
by adjusting cars’ tire pressures. Vehicle-related fatalities also decreased when the National
Maximum Speed Law was enacted, but the argument could be made that this was caused not by
decreased speed limits, but by Congress’s actions to increase seatbelt usage that same year.
The Supreme Court recently ruled that federal funding threats went too far: National
Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius (2012). This case examined the constitutionality
of multiple components of the Affordable Care Act. Two of the most critical issues were the
legality of the individual mandate and the Medicaid expansion. The individual mandate included
required Americans who do not purchase healthcare to pay a fee to the Internal Revenue Service,
and the Medicaid expansion gave states the option of either adopting the new policies or risk
losing all its Medicaid funding. The Court ruled that while the individual mandate was not
protected by the commerce clause, it was protected by Congress’s right to levy taxes when
deemed necessary–Chief John Justice Roberts cited South Dakota v. Dole in his justification of
this action. However, the threat of cutting Medicaid funding was deemed unconstitutional, as it
was too coercive. Once again, the Court used Dole to show that the Medicaid expansion was an
example of when funding threats went too far.
South Dakota v. Dole gave the Supreme Court the opportunity to apply its precedent to a
variety of future cases, liquor-related, and beyond. As the federal government’s ability to justify
using funding cuts grows, states continue to lose influence. Today, this continues to be a
prevalent topic. Every state’s minimum drinking age is still twenty-one to avoid highway
funding cuts, almost all states use Common Core standards to avoid education funding cuts, and
President Donald Trump is threatening to cut funding to sanctuary cities.
According to the Supreme Court, these acts are constitutional if they are intended for the
common good and the money at stake isn’t overly coercive. The problem is that almost any
funding put at stake is too coercive. According to Political Scientists Kenneth J. Meier and David
R. Morgan, the compliance theory states that if the net utility of complying (benefit of complying
minus cost of complying) is greater than the net utility of not complying (benefit of not
complying minus cost of not complying), than a rational actor will comply (or vice versa). When
applying this theory to cases like South Dakota v. Dole, states will always be coerced into
complying, even if the financial cost isn’t overwhelmingly large–the net utility of compliance
will still be greater.
The inverse relationship between the Twenty-First Amendment’s influence with that of
the commerce clause signifies a larger issue that threatens numerous states’ rights. Even if the
compliance theory is accurate, the Supreme Court still holds the power to determine when
Congress’s use of the commerce clause is constitutional. While the policy of manipulating states’
actions via financial coercion is protected to a degree, it is unfair and Congress should amend the
Constitution to ban the policy. The Court is not responsible for judging what is fair; they’re
responsible for interpreting the Constitution as it currently stands. Therefore, their actions are
just, but the politicians responsible for these acts are not. In the words of Chief Justice Roberts,
“it is not our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices.” Until the
Constitution is amended, all college students can do is advocate for states’ rights, drink a non-
alcoholic beverage, and listen to Sammy Hagar sing, “I can’t drive fifty-five.”
By Tyler Williams, Sophomore, Political Science/Mass Comm major