The not so United States: on many of today's hottest issues, the states are ignoring Washington and going their own way. Is this what the Founding Fathers had in mind?

If you're paid the minimum wage at your part-time job, you might want to flip burgers or stock shelves in Washington State, which has enacted the highest minimum wage in the country, $7.63 an hour. Are you itching to help fight global warming? Then think about moving to California, where lawmakers are considering the toughest greenhouse-gas curbs in the nation. Do you believe in evolution? If so, you may want to steer clear of Kansas, which wants its public high schools to teach the subject with skepticism.

Politicians, especially in Washington, often speak about "the American people" as if they were of one voice on matters of concern to the nation. While that ideal has never truly reflected reality, it may be even less true today as states increasingly strike out on their own on a wide range of issues, from health care to gay marriage, from stem-cell research to the environment.

In doing so, the states are, in effect, challenging the federal government to go along with them, try to stop them, or just get out of their way.

TAKING THE LEAD

Here are some recent actions taken by various states:

* 17 STATES & THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA have adopted higher minimum wages than the federal minimum of $5.15 an hour, which critics say is too low. (See chart, p. 14, and Debate, p. 27.) Washington State tops the list, with Oregon ($7.50) and Connecticut ($7.40) not far behind. The federal minimum was last raised by Congress in 1997.

* CALIFORNIA, NEW JERSEY, MARYLAND, CONNECTICUT ILLINOIS have allocated state funds for stem-cell research, which many scientists believe could lead to new methods for fighting degenerative diseases like Parkinson's. President Bush has tightly limited federal funding in this area; in July he vetoed a bill that would have increased such funding, citing moral concerns about the use of discarded embryos, from which scientists extract stem cells.

* OHIO, TEXAS & 17 OTHER STATES have amended their state constitutions to ban same-sex marriage, while a federal constitutional amendment failed to win congressional approval this summer. (Massachusetts is the only state that currently permits same-sex marriage, as a result of a State Supreme Court ruling in 2004.)

* THE CALIFORNIA LEGISLATURE is considering a bill that would make the state the first to impose limits on the emissions of all greenhouse gases. The Bush administration has often argued that such limits would stunt the growth of the nation's economy.

* SOUTH DAKOTA enacted a law in March that bans all abortions except those necessary to save the life of the mother. Supporters of the law said it was meant as a challenge to Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion in the U.S.

FEDERALISM & THE CONSTITUTION

To some extent, states have always had their own laws and policies on issues like education and taxes. Indeed, that was precisely the point of the federal system the Founding Fathers designed in the Constitution: The federal government and the states each have certain powers, holding each other in check while everyone reaps the benefits of a large, unified nation. The debate over just how strong the federal and individual state governments should be--and which issues should be decided at the federal and state levels--has been going on for more than two centuries.

Right now, the states appear to be aggressively pushing their own agendas. "I think this is up there among the eras of greatest distance among the states," says John D. Donahue, a professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. "It's because we have fairly intense cleavages in values, preferences, points of view among the population, and in some of these areas they do tend to cluster state by state."

There have been other points in American history when states went their own ways on high-profile issues and state laws were radically different. The most prominent examples are slavery before the Civil War, and later the Jim Crow laws, which limited the rights of blacks until the 1960s.

"Is it any more extreme [today] than having slavery in Virginia and laws excluding blacks from voting in Illinois when they could [vote] in Maine?" asks Pauline Maier, a professor of American history at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "Not all states march in sync."

In some ways, this landscape is a red state/blue state divide (a reference to the states that tend to vote Republican and Democratic, respectively), but it goes beyond cultural hot buttons to issues like legal reform and health care. In April, Massachusetts became the first state to enact near-universal health-care coverage, accomplishing what the federal government has failed to do over many decades.

This state activism has turned federalism--once a favorite concept of conservatives seizing on states' rights to buck liberal national laws and court decisions--into an equal-opportunity idea embraced just as readily by liberals.

"Much of the association of federalism with conservative politics is the result of historical accident," Richard Thompson Ford, a Stanford University law professor, argued in an article on Slate.com last year. "There is nothing inherently conservative about limitations on the power of Congress and the executive."

STATES AS LABORATORIES

Some states appear to be motivated by the belief that the federal government has not done enough on some issues.

"Look what states are doing on global warming," says Man Ehrenhalt, executive editor of Governing magazine. "Many of them are involved in climate change, and that may well force the federal government's hand. Stem-cell research--states are doing that because the Bush administration doesn't want to do very much."

The states have previously served as laboratories for changes later adopted at the federal level, such as during the early 20th century, historians say. For instance, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's federal New Deal programs-including the Social Security Act, which provides income for retirees and unemployment benefits for workers who lose their jobs--were modeled after state programs.

The crystal ball, then, would indicate that some of the issues the states are grappling with will eventually get sorted out nationally in federal legislation. But that may not happen overnight, or on every issue.

Give it a decade before the spillover gets sorted out, according to Donahue.

"If you look through American history there's an ebb and flow of more state autonomy and more federal authority," he says. "Within another 10 years, we're going to see another season of centralization, and I think we'll have convergence on a lot of issues."

AMENDMENTS BANNING SAME-SEX MARRIAGE

* ALABAMA

* ALASKA

* ARKANSAS

* GEORGIA

* KANSAS

* KENTUCKY

* LOUISIANA

* MICHIGAN

* MISSISSIPPI

* MISSOURI

* MONTANA

* NEBRASKA

* NEVADA

* NORTH DAKOTA

* OHIO

* OKLAHOMA

* OREGON

* TEXAS

* UTAH

PERMITS GAY MARRIAGE

Pam Belluck is Boston bureau chief for The New York Times.

HIGHER MINIMUM WAGES

* MASSACHUSETTS

* ALASKA         $7.15
* CALIFORNIA     $6.75
* CONNECTICUT    $7.40
* DELAWARE       $6.15
* DISTRICT OF
  COLUMBIA       $7.00
* FLORIDA        $6.40
* HAWAII         $6.75
* ILLINOIS       $6.50
* MAINE          $6.50
* MARYLAND       $6.15
* MASSACHUSETTS  $6.75
* MINNESOTA      $6.15
* NEW JERSEY     $6.15
* NEW YORK       $6.75
* OREGON         $7.50
* RHODE ISLAND   $7.10
* VERMONT        $7.25
* WASHINGTON     $7.63

STATE VOTER TURNOUT: HIGH & LOWS

Percentage of eligible voter who cast
ballots in the 2004 presidential election

HIGHEST %

Minnesota       75
Wisconsin       74
Maine           74
Oregon          71
New Hampshire   70
South Dakota    69

LOWEST

Hawaii           48
Texas            52
Arkansas         52
South Carolina   52
Georgia          54
Arizona          54

SOURCE: U.S. ELECTION ASSISTANCE COMMISSION

BACKGROUND

The debate over states' rights and the power of the federal government is as old as the nation. While the Constitution gave a lot more power to the federal government than it did to the states, Article 10 said that "powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution ... are reserved to the States."

CRITICAL THINKING

* Note the observation of Harvard professor John Donahue, who says there are "fairly intense" differences in values between people in various sections of the U.S. What do you think might account for the cultural/political differences that so sharply divide people who live in different regions?

* Ask students to consider one of the important issues raised in the article: the minimum wage. Why might states like Washington or Delaware set their minimum wages higher than states like Alabama or Ohio?

* Ask students why they think the Founding Fathers established a federal system under which the national and state governments could keep each other in check.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

* Explain why you would--or would not--consider moving to a different state because of that state's social and/or economic policies.

* Do you feet so strongly about a social or economic issue that you think the federal government or your state government should enact a law relevant to that issue?

WRITING PROMPT

* Have students write five-paragraph essays in which they identify social and/or economic issues they believe should be dealt with at the federal level and those that might better be dealt with by the states.

WEB WATCH

http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/index.html US. Census Bureau economic and social data on each state.

www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/University of Michigan maps of the U.S. show the "red state/blue state" split. See accompanying maps showing more complex gradations of political affiliations.

1. The Founding Fathers established a form of government in which the national and state governments would each retain certain powers. This system is called

a democracy.

b parliamentarian.

c nationalism.

d federalism.

2. One example of differences in state policies were "Jim Crow laws," which

a permitted businesses to disregard environmental regulations.

b limited the rights of blacks in the South.

c provided special tax breaks for the wealthy.

d provided public funds for religious schools.

3. Why do its backers want more funding for stem-cell research?

4. Why does President Bush oppose taws requiring big cuts in greenhouse gas emissions? He says

a such limits would hurt the U.S. economy.

b most Americans don't understand the impact of greenhouse gases.

c such laws are poorly written.

d there is no proof that greenhouse gases are harmful.

5. The "red state/blue state divide" refers to

a differing levels of economic development in states.

b differing forms of government in states.

c states that tend to vote Republican and Democratic respectively.

d the dates when states joined the U.S.

6. One good example of a federal program that began in the states is--,which provides income for retirees. (two words)

IN DEPTH QUESTIONS

1. Why do you believe the federal, government and many state governments disagree on issues of concern to the American people?

2. Identify at least two values that you believe all Americans share and explain why you believe people share these values.

3. Explain why a particular issue identified in the article is important to you.

ANSWER KEY

1. [d] federalism.

2. [b] limited rights of blacks in the South.

3. They believe stem-cell, research could lead to new methods of fighting disease. (Similar wording is acceptable.)

4. [a] such limits would hurt the U.S. economy.

5. [c] states that tend to vote Republican and Democratic respectively.

6. Social Security