Landor v. Louisiana Dept of Corrections and Public Safety · ¶130

This means that today’s decision might well land a serious blow to Congress’s effectiveness. Or it could end up merely a bothersome statutory drafting guide: If Congress adapts its Spending Clause legislation to fit the Court’s newly prescribed formulas—and if the Court lets it do so— then the majority’s robotic importation of contract principles will have little real-world effect. Either way, though, “[t]he suggestion that [Spending Clause] statutes are not ‘law’ on the same level as other pieces of legislation makes little sense.” See A. Gluck, Our [National] Federalism, 123 Yale L. J. 1996, 2031 (2014). And it makes even less sense of the jurisprudence that has developed for decades around those laws, to the great benefit of the American people.

slip opinion, revised 6/28/26
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