[8][9] Familiar examples of Federal Unfunded Mandates in the United States include the Americans with Disabilities Act and Medicaid.
[3] An "intergovernmental mandate" generally refers to the responsibilities or activities that one level of government imposes on another by legislative, executive or judicial action.
[17] For example, the passage of Executive Order 12291 required a cost-benefit analysis and an Office of Management and Budget clearance on proposed agency regulations, and the State and Local Cost Estimate Act of 1981 required the Congressional Budget Office to determine the state and local cost effects of proposed federal legislation moving through the Legislative Branch.
[19] The U.S. Supreme Court has been involved in deciding the federal government's role in the U.S. governmental system based on constitutionality.
[20] During the period between the New Deal era and the mid-1980s the court generally utilized an expansive interpretation of the interstate commerce clause and the 14th Amendment to validate the growth of the federal government's involvement in domestic policymaking.
[21] For example, the 1985 Supreme Court case Garcia v. San Antonio Metropolitan Transit Authority affirmed the ability for the federal government to directly regulate state and local governmental affairs.
[24] In 1992 the court determined in various cases that the US Constitution provides state and locality protections concerning unfunded mandate enactments.
The 1970 Amendments to the Clean Air Act established the National Ambient Air Quality Standards, authorized requirements for control of motor vehicle emissions, increased the federal enforcement authority but required states to implement plans to adhere to these standards.
[37] The Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA) was passed by the United States Congress in 1986 to halt certain practices of patient dumping.
[39] The 2001 No Child Left Behind Act was passed in response to widespread concern about the quality of public education in America.
[40] The act required schools receiving federal funding to administer statewide standardized tests to students at the end of each year.
[41] To continue receiving Federal grants, states had to develop plans that demonstrated their steps to improve the quality of education in their schools.
[41] The No Child Left Behind Act mandated that states fund the improvements in their schools and provide the appropriate training for less qualified teachers.
[48] The Unfunded Mandates Reform Act (UMRA) was approved by the 104th Congress on March 22, 1995, and became effective October 5, 1995, during the Clinton administration.
[51] UMRA does not apply to "conditions of federal assistance; duties stemming from participation in voluntary federal programs; rules issued by independent regulatory agencies; rules issued without a general notice of proposed rulemaking; and rules and legislative provisions that cover individual constitutional rights, discrimination, emergency assistance, grant accounting and auditing procedures, national security, treaty obligations, and certain elements of Social Security".
[51] Proponents of the Act argue that UMRA is needed to limit legislation that imposes obligations on SLTGs and that creates higher costs and less efficiency, while opponents argue that sometimes federal unfunded mandates are necessary to achieve a national goal that state and local governments don't fund voluntarily.
[51] The Act was written to amend UMRA by having the CBO compare the authorized level of funding in legislation to the costs of carrying out any changes.
The bill was introduced by Republican North Carolina Representative Virginia Foxx and passed by the House on February 4, 2015.