Comment by mothballed
1 day ago
They haven't for a long time, just that most of the time they were doing things we thought was for good (EPA, civil rights act, controlled substance act, etc) and we thereby entered a post-constitutional world to let that stuff slide by despite the 10th amendment limiting the federal powers to enumerated powers.
Eventually we got used to letting the feds slide on all the good things to the point everything was just operating on slick ice, and people like Trump just pushed it to the next logical step which is to also use the post-constitutional world to his own personal advantage and for gross tyranny against the populace.
The civil rights acts had firm constitutional grounding in the 14th and 15th amendments.
14th and 15th amendments were binding on government. The civil rights act was binding on private businesses, even those engaging in intrastate trade.
The civil rights act of 1875, which also tried to bind on private businesses, was found unconstitutional in doing so, despite coming after the 15th amendment. But by the 60s and 70s we were already in a post-constitutional society as FDRs threatening to pack the courts, the 'necessities' implemented during WWII, and the progressive era more or less ended up with SCOTUS deferring to everything as interstate commerce (most notable, in Wickard v Filburn). The 14th and 15th amendment did not change between the time the same things were found unconstitutional, then magically constitutional ~80+ years later.
The truth is, the civil rights act was seen as so important (that time around) that they bent the constitution to let it work. And now much of the most relied on pieces of legislation relied on a tortured interpretation of the constitution, making things incredibly difficult to fix, and setting the stage for people like Trump.
If civil rights are unconstitutional, you don't have a country.