context: Under Nevada's proposed requirement, each time Congress decides to use federal property in a manner that incidentally burdens a State - for example by designating such property for use as a military installation, a prison, a dam, a storage or disposal site, or a conservation area - it must formulate neutral selection criteria and apply those criteria to every piece of federal property in the Nation before selecting a site. Courts presumably would be required to scrutinize the substantive basis of the legislation in question to ensure that the criteria were genuinely neutral and generally applied. This is far more intrusive than any requirement that there be a rational basis for Congress's judgment that a particular regulation respecting a particular property is "needful." The substantive constraint on legislation and the judicial role implicit in Nevada's "equal treatment" requirement are, in our view, totally at odds with the broad interpretation given to Congress's Property Clause powers.
citation_a.signal: see also
citation_a.identifier: 269 F.3d 1092, 1097
citation_a.parenthetical: finding no constitutional objection to the specificity of legislation requiring construction of a World War II Memorial on the National Mall
citation_a.sentence: See Biodiversity Assoc. v. Cables, 357 F.3d 1152, 1161-62 (10th Cir.2004) (rejecting a constitutional challenge to legislation prescribing in “minute detail” the management of a single national forest on the grounds that Congress, in exercising its Property Clause powers, “is permitted to be as specific as it deems appropriate” and that “[i]t would be difficult if not impossible to control the use of federal lands without reference to specific actions affecting specific tracts of land”); see also Nat’l Coalition to Save Our Mall v. Norton, 269 F.3d 1092, 1097 (D.C.Cir.2001) (finding no constitutional objection to the specificity of legislation requiring construction of a World War II Memorial on the National Mall).
citation_b.signal: see
citation_b.identifier: 357 F.3d 1152, 1161-62
citation_b.parenthetical: rejecting a constitutional challenge to legislation prescribing in "minute detail" the management of a single national forest on the grounds that Congress, in exercising its Property Clause powers, "is permitted to be as specific as it deems appropriate" and that "[i]t would be difficult if not impossible to control the use of federal lands without reference to specific actions affecting specific tracts of land"
citation_b.sentence: See Biodiversity Assoc. v. Cables, 357 F.3d 1152, 1161-62 (10th Cir.2004) (rejecting a constitutional challenge to legislation prescribing in “minute detail” the management of a single national forest on the grounds that Congress, in exercising its Property Clause powers, “is permitted to be as specific as it deems appropriate” and that “[i]t would be difficult if not impossible to control the use of federal lands without reference to specific actions affecting specific tracts of land”); see also Nat’l Coalition to Save Our Mall v. Norton, 269 F.3d 1092, 1097 (D.C.Cir.2001) (finding no constitutional objection to the specificity of legislation requiring construction of a World War II Memorial on the National Mall).