1985 ruling Garcia v. San Antonio Metropolitan Transit Authority' by the U.S. Supreme Court has profound implications for American federalism. At issue the case was whether the minimum wage and overtime provisions of the national Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) apply to employees of publicly owned mass transit systems. In a 1976 case, National League of Cities v. Usery,2 the court had ruled that these provisions did not apply to state and local units in areas of governmental functions. That decision was the first many years to give much judicial weight to the Tenth Amendment, which provides that The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. court could have dealt with Garcia simply by saying whether or not mass transit was a traditional governmental function. Indeed, the Reagan administration had urged that the court rule mass transit not a function and simply extend FLSA coverage to include this group of municipal employees. court, however, went much further and overturned National League of Cities v. Usery entirely, and the language of the decision casts great doubt on the current significance of the Tenth Amendment. Two effects of Garcia can be distinguished. First, the ruling has immediate short-run impacts that are mostly fiscal and procedural character. Second, it has major long-run implications for the nature of the American system of government.