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Opinion of Stevens, J.
The Framers also directed that the House be composed of Representatives selected by voters in the several States, the consequence of which is that "the states are the strategic yardsticks for the measurement of interest and opinion, the special centers of political activity, the separate geographical determinants of national as well as local politics." Id., at 546.
Whenever Congress passes a statute, it does so against the background of state law already in place; the propriety of taking national action is thus measured by the metric of the existing state norms that Congress seeks to supplement or supplant.2 The persuasiveness of any justification for overcoming legislative inertia and taking national action, either creating new federal obligations or providing for their enforcement, must necessarily be judged in reference to state interests, as expressed in existing state laws. The precise scope of federal laws, of course, can be shaped with nuanced attention to state interests. The Congress also has the authority to grant or withhold jurisdiction in lower federal courts. The burden of being haled into a federal forum for the enforcement of federal law, thus, can be expanded or contracted as Congress deems proper, which decision, like all other legislative acts, necessarily contemplates state interests. Thus, Congress can use its broad range of flexible legislative tools to approach the delicate issue of how to balance local and national interests in the
exclusively by the State legislatures. . . . Thus, [it] will owe its existence more or less to the favor of the State governments, and must consequently feel a dependence, which is much more likely to beget a disposition too obsequious than too overbearing towards them").
2 When Congress expanded the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 (ADEA) in 1974 to apply to public employers, all 50 States had some form of age discrimination law, but 24 of them did not extend their own laws to public employers. See App. to Brief for Respondents 1a-25a.
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