system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: How can the SCOTUS rule that healthcare laws put too much pressure on states to comply when it was ok to use federal highway funding to pressure states into adopting the national speed limit and drinking age?

There was a 2012 ruling in healthcare where the SCOTUS said fed put too much pressure on states. Now, today, they're discussing this idea with the Affordable Care Act and the fed withholding tax credits for compliance. This idea sounds ridiculous to me in light of all the federal laws passed by holding money hostage from states, such as speed limit and drinking age. Can anyone explain this contradiction?
gpt
In *South Dakota v. Dole*, South Dakota challenged the federal government's conditioning of highway funds on states raising the drinking age to 21. South Dakota wanted to continue to let 19-year-olds drink and receive federal money. The Court held that the government can condition policy changes on funds provided that condition is related to the funds being withheld. In that case, the funds were related because the reason the federal government wanted to raise the drinking age was to help cut down on drunk driving.

In *National Federation of Independent Business, et al. v. Kathleen Sebelius*, which is prior ACA case and the one where the Court laid out the rule about pressure that Justice Kennedy is referring to, the funds that would be withheld were clearly related to the policy change (everything had to do with medical care), so that argument wasn’t made. Instead, the Court said that the government could pressure states, but not coerce them. In drawing the distinction between pressure and coercion, the Court pointed out that the funds that were being withheld from South Dakota amounted to about  .5% of South Dakota’s budget, but here some of the funds would account for 10% of a state’s budget. The court didn’t draw a clear line between what is pressure and what is coercion, but it said that .5% is pressure and 10% is coercion. The line is somewhere in between there.

Here are the relevant case excerpts. From *South Dakota v. Dole*:

>Incident to this power, Congress may attach conditions on the receipt of federal funds, and has repeatedly employed the power "to further broad policy objectives by conditioning receipt of federal moneys upon compliance by the recipient with federal statutory and administrative directives."The breadth of this power was made clear in United States v. Butler, 297 U. S. 1, 297 U. S. 66 (1936), where the Court, resolving a longstanding debate over the scope of the Spending Clause, determined that "the power of Congress to authorize expenditure of public moneys for public purposes is not limited by the direct grants of legislative power found in the Constitution. [Internal citations omitted]

And from *National Federation of Independent Business, et al. v. Kathleen Sebelius*:

> Congress may use its spending power to create incentives for States to act in accordance with federal policies. But when “pressure turns into compulsion,” ibid., the legislation runs contrary to our system of federalism. “[T]he Constitution simply does not give Congress the authority to require the States to regulate.” New York, 505 U. S., at 178. That is true whether Congress directly commands a State to regulate or indirectly coerces a State to adopt a federal regulatory system as its own.

From the same opinion:

>It is easy to see how the Dole Court could conclude that the threatened loss of less than half of one percent of South Dakota’s budget left that State with a “prerogative” to reject Congress’s desired policy, “not merely in theory but in fact.” 483 U. S., at 211–212. The threatened loss of over 10 percent of a State’s overall budget, in contrast, is economic dragooning that leaves the States with no real option but to acquiesce in the Medicaid expansion.