Medicaid ruling and the national drinking age?

[© Tweed the Younger]

following the logic of the SC in ruling that PPACA's Medicaid funding scheme was sufficiently coercive/non-voluntary to have to go, could http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Minimum_Drinking_Age_Act be next?  any state that does not have a 21+ drinking age gets 10% of federal aid to highways withheld.

[© Tweed the Younger]

others have been thinking on this road too

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/06/29/what-the-supreme-court-obamacare-ruling-means-for-the-drinking-age.html

[The Mikado]

What states do you think would be interested in changing this?  I could see places that attract a lot of  tourists like Nevada and Louisiana lining up to do this.

[© Tweed the Younger]

the liquor and restaurant lobbies would come out full bore.  so it's hard to say.

[True Federalist]

I doubt that the Supreme Court is interested in revisiting South Dakota v. Dole.  It would need to find some reason why a holdback was sufficiently not a burden as to be constitutional in 1987 and yet is now so burdensome as to be unconstitutional.  While it is possible that some other Federal laws that use the power of the purse to persuade the States to do the Federal government's bidding could be overturned, the NMDA Act looks to be safe for now.  At best such a case would cause the 10% holdback be reduced to the 5% it was when the issue was decided in 1987.

[© Tweed the Younger]

after reading SD v Dole it's hard to reconcile it w/ the PPACA ruling.  doesn't mean it will be actually revisited of course, contradictions abound in law as much as anywhere.

[True Federalist]

Not really.  both held that if it these sorts of conditional funding mechanism were too burdensome they would be unconstitutional, but provide no clear guidance on when the threshold would be crossed.

[Inks.LWC Supports Chuck Hagel]

Tweed, I had the exact same thought, but then I went and read that part of the case, and I remember there was something in it that I saw that made me think it wouldn't work for national drinking age.  And for the life of me, I can't remember what it was.  Sometime tomorrow, I may have time to go through and reread it and remember.