Subject: Re: January 6, Part Deux
That's interesting. So if earthquake standards are updated requiring pillars in underground parking garages be wrapped in steel to help prevent damage and collapse, the Federal Building doesn't have to comply?

Yes! Here's the federal district court case, holding that the USPS (as a federal agency) does not have to pull building permits or comply with building codes when building their buildings:

For these reasons, the Court grants the Postal Service's Motion for Summary Judgment and declares that the Town may not impose the state building code or the building permit fee schedule on the Postal Service in connection with the West Putnam Station.

https://law.justia.com/cases/f...(general%20duties%20of,Court%20has%20consistently%20held%20that:

Let's say ICE wants to drive across someone's property to get surprise access for a potential immigrant site and it's chained off. they can break the chain and drive across the lawn in civilian cars with no problem?

Yes! Here's another federal district court case, holding that a city cannot use trespass laws to prevent postal workers from walking across people's lawns in order to make their postal deliver routes more convenient:

Thus the issue here is not whether Congress has manifested an intent to preempt the subject matter of the Pittsburg ordinance and oust local regulation. The issue is whether that ordinance intrudes into and interferes with activities of the federal government conducted in pursuance of its Constitutional power to operate the postal system. That it does so cannot be doubted. Here, as in Johnson, the federal government has asserted certain authority to implement *1087 the postal power, i. e., the authority to insure the expeditious delivery of mail by, among other things, requiring carriers to cross lawns in appropriate circumstances. And here, as in Johnson, local action threatens to interrupt the federal government's exercise of its authority, i. e., precluding the Service from directing carriers under any circumstances to cross lawns.[9]

It may well be, as defendant suggests, that trespass regulations are a customary and unquestioned exercise of the police power but, as Justice Holmes analogized, "even the most unquestionable and most universally applicable of state laws, such as those concerning murder, will not be allowed to control the conduct of a marshal of the United States acting under and in pursuance of the laws of the United States. In re Neagle, 135 U.S. 1, 10 S. Ct. 658, 34 L. Ed. 55." 254 U.S. at 56-57, 41 S. Ct. at 16.[10]

https://law.justia.com/cases/f...


In this vein, the federal courts have also ruled that post office drivers don't have to have a state driver's license. And, as noted above, these cases (and others) are why post office vehicles don't have license plates altogether, much less partially obscured ones. Because the states can't make them have one.


* * * *

There is an irony in what PhoolishPhilip is suggesting. As a general matter, federal officials can be required to follow state laws. But it's when following the state law is merely an incidental or de minimis burden on them performing their federal duties.

IOW, the states can only apply their regulations if it won't stop the federal government from doing what it wants to do.

The Supremacy Clause means that the states can't use their power to push back on the federal government. By definition, if what the states are doing is meaningful in impeding the federal government, it's barred by the Supremacy Clause. They can only exercise state power if the state power won't interfere with what the feds want to do.