Also known as: legislative actions · legislative act · legislative acts
Written by attorneys — see sources below.
A formal enactment or resolution by a legislative body that creates binding rules or policy with the force of law. Such action must satisfy bicameralism and presentment when undertaken by Congress and cannot be commandeered by federal statute when undertaken by a state legislature.
State legislators in State A pass a bill licensing sports gambling operators within their borders. Federal officials immediately sue to enjoin the new licensing regime. The court holds that the federal prohibition targets the state's own legislative action rather than private conduct and therefore violates the anti-commandeering doctrine.
The city council of East Cleveland adopts an ordinance that restricts which relatives may live together in a single dwelling. A grandmother who shares her home with a grandchild is prosecuted under the new rule. She challenges the ordinance as an arbitrary legislative action that infringes protected liberty interests.
In early 1973, Mrs. Inez Moore received a notice of violation from the city of East Cleveland. The notice stated that her grandson John Moore, Jr., was an illegal occupant of her home. It directed her to comply with the housing ordinance. Mrs. Moore lived in her East Cleveland home together with her son Dale Moore, Sr., and her two grandsons Dale Moore, Jr., and John Moore, Jr. John came to live with her after his mother's death when he was less than one year old. When she failed to remove John from the home, the city filed a criminal charge against her. Mrs. Moore moved to dismiss the charge. She claimed that the ordinance was constitutionally invalid on its face. Her motion was overruled. Upon conviction she was sentenced to five days in jail and a $25 fine. The East Cleveland ordinance limited occupancy of a dwelling unit to members of a single family. The ordinance defined family to include only a husband or wife of the nominal head of the household, unmarried children of the head or spouse provided they have no children residing with them, a parent of the head or spouse, or not more than one dependent child of the head or spouse along with that child's spouse and dependent children. The Ohio Court of Appeals affirmed the conviction after giving full consideration to her constitutional claims. The Ohio Supreme Court denied review of the case. The United States Supreme Court noted probable jurisdiction of her appeal.
View caseThe New York legislature enacts a statute limiting bakers to ten hours of work per day. A bakery owner is fined for violating the limit and sues, arguing that the legislative action lacks a reasonable relation to public health and therefore exceeds the state's police power.
The New York legislature passed a labor law in 1897 that regulated bakeries and confectionery establishments. Section 110 of article 8 of that law stated that no employee shall be required or permitted to work more than sixty hours in any one week or more than ten hours in any one day. This applied unless for the purpose of making a shorter work day on the last day of the week. The plaintiff in error violated the one hundred and tenth section of article 8, chapter 415, of the Laws of 1897, known as the labor law of the State of New York, in that he wrongfully and unlawfully required and permitted an employe working for him to work more than sixty hours in one week. The charge arose from a voluntary contract rather than any use of physical force. The judgments of the County Court of Oneida County, the Supreme Court, and the Court of Appeals of New York upheld the conviction under the statute, although several judges dissented. The record indicated that the state courts had viewed the law as a measure relating to public health. The case came before the Supreme Court of the United States after argument on February 23 and 24, 1905. The Court rendered its decision on April 17, 1905.
View caseState legislators in State B pass a statute authorizing same-sex couples to obtain marriage licenses on equal terms with opposite-sex couples. Opponents file suit claiming the legislative action exceeds state authority under the federal Constitution. The court upholds the statute as a valid exercise of legislative power.
The petitioners were fourteen same-sex couples and two men whose same-sex partners were deceased. They lived in Michigan, Kentucky, Ohio, and Tennessee. Those states defined marriage as a union between one man and one woman under their constitutions and statutes. The petitioners filed suits in federal district courts in their home states. They sought marriage licenses or recognition of marriages lawfully performed elsewhere. James Obergefell and John Arthur traveled from Ohio to Maryland to marry aboard a medical transport plane because Arthur suffered from ALS; Obergefell later sought to be listed as surviving spouse on Arthur's death certificate. April DeBoer and Jayne Rowse, Michigan nurses, adopted three children but could not both serve as legal parents under state adoption rules. Army Reserve Sergeant Ijpe DeKoe and Thomas Kostura married in New York before DeKoe's deployment to Afghanistan and later settled in Tennessee. Each district court ruled in the petitioners' favor. The respondents appealed. The Sixth Circuit consolidated the cases and reversed the district court judgments. The petitioners sought certiorari, which the Supreme Court granted. Same-sex couples had begun establishing families after substantial cultural and political developments in the late twentieth century. Earlier litigation had addressed the legal status of gays and lesbians, including challenges that reached the Supreme Court in Bowers v. Hardwick and Lawrence v. Texas.
View caseThe Pennsylvania legislature adopts detailed requirements for abortion providers, including informed-consent rules and a twenty-four-hour waiting period. A clinic challenges the provisions as an undue burden on the right to choose. The court evaluates whether the legislative action survives constitutional scrutiny under the undue-burden standard.
The Pennsylvania Abortion Control Act of 1982, as amended in 1988 and 1989, established several requirements governing the performance of abortions within the Commonwealth. The Act required a woman seeking an abortion to provide informed consent after receiving specific information from a physician or counselor at least twenty-four hours before the procedure. It mandated that a minor obtain the informed consent of one parent, subject to a judicial bypass option. It further required a married woman to sign a statement confirming that she had notified her husband of her planned abortion, unless certain exceptions applied. The Act also imposed reporting obligations on facilities providing abortion services and defined a medical emergency exception to the various requirements. Before any of these provisions took effect, the petitioners brought suit in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. The petitioners were five abortion clinics and one physician representing himself as well as a class of physicians who provide abortion services. They sought declaratory and injunctive relief and challenged each provision as unconstitutional on its face. The District Court entered a preliminary injunction. After conducting a three-day bench trial, the District Court held all the provisions unconstitutional and entered a permanent injunction against their enforcement by Pennsylvania. The Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit affirmed in part and reversed in part. It adopted the District Court's factual findings and legal analysis except with respect to the spousal notification requirement. The Court of Appeals upheld the spousal notification requirement as constitutional and applied the undue burden standard in evaluating the provisions. The Supreme Court granted certiorari to consider the constitutionality of the challenged provisions of the Pennsylvania statute.
View caseThe West Virginia legislature passes a statute requiring all public-school students to salute the flag each morning. A family whose religious beliefs forbid the salute refuses to comply and faces expulsion. The students challenge the legislative action as violating the First Amendment right to refrain from compelled speech.
Following the Supreme Court's 1940 decision in Minersville School District v. Gobitis, the West Virginia legislature amended its statutes to require all schools in the state to conduct courses of instruction in history, civics, and the Constitutions of the United States and West Virginia for the purpose of teaching, fostering, and perpetuating the ideals, principles, and spirit of Americanism. The State Board of Education was directed to prescribe the courses of study covering these subjects for public schools. Private, parochial, and denominational schools were required to prescribe similar courses. On January 9, 1942, the West Virginia State Board of Education adopted a resolution ordering that the salute to the flag become a regular part of the program of activities in the public schools, with all teachers and pupils required to participate. The resolution specified the stiff-arm salute with the right hand raised and palm turned up while repeating the pledge: "I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands; one Nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all." Refusal to salute was defined as an act of insubordination to be dealt with by expulsion. Readmission was denied by statute until compliance. The expelled child was treated as unlawfully absent. Parents or guardians faced prosecution with fines not exceeding $50 and jail terms not exceeding thirty days. The appellees are citizens of the United States and West Virginia who are Jehovah's Witnesses, an unincorporated body teaching that the obligation imposed by law of God is superior to that of laws enacted by temporal government. Their religious beliefs include a literal version of Exodus, Chapter 20, verses 4 and 5, which prohibits making or bowing down to any graven image or likeness. They consider the flag an image within this command, leading them to refuse to salute it on religious grounds. Children of the appellees who were pupils in the public schools were expelled for their refusal to salute the flag and take the pledge of allegiance. Their parents were prosecuted for causing delinquency. Officials threatened to send the children to reformatories maintained for criminally inclined juveniles. The appellees brought suit in the United States District Court for themselves and others similarly situated to enjoin enforcement of the laws and regulations against them. The Board of Education moved to dismiss the complaint setting forth these facts. The complaint alleged that the law and regulations denied religious freedom and freedom of speech and were invalid under the due process and equal protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment. The cause was submitted on the pleadings to a District Court of three judges, which restrained enforcement as to the plaintiffs and those of that class. The Board of Education brought the case to the Supreme Court by direct appeal.
View caseLegislative action originates in a legislative body and must satisfy bicameralism and presentment when undertaken by Congress. Executive or administrative rules implement existing statutes rather than create new substantive policy. When an agency issues nationwide rules without fresh statutory authorization, courts treat the measure as unauthorized legislative action.
The doctrine prevents Congress from issuing direct orders to state legislatures about what they may or may not enact. A federal statute that prohibits states from authorizing sports betting targets legislative action itself rather than private conduct and is therefore invalid. The same principle bars federal commands that force state legislatures to adopt identical harbor-access rules.
Yes. When a legislative body enacts an ordinance directing pedestrians to use a designated detour around a construction site, that enactment can itself define the minimum level of care a reasonably prudent person must exercise for self-protection. The jury then decides whether the plaintiff violated the ordinance and whether the violation caused the harm.
…and unlimited government is abolished. Either the Constitution is superior and paramount or it is on a level with ordinary legislative acts. If the former, then a legislative act contrary to the Constitution is not law. It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is. Those who apply…