Everyone knows that federal control of policing is the path to overhauling policing nationwide. With few notable exceptions, the Constitution does not allow the federal government to control state or local government agencies. This principle is commonly known as federalism. Federalism provides for a sharing or a division of power between the federal government and states. The federal government is permitted to exercise only those powers expressly granted to the federal government by the U.S. Constitution, which include the power to regulate local and state policing (Learn more). Nonetheless, determined legal strategists like Civil Rights Activist Thurgood Marshall who later served as a Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court, endeavored to find a way to access remedies that did not fit squarely within the existing legal construct. Using the Commerce Clause—Article of the U.S. Constitution—Marshall successfully argued in the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education case that separate but equal was unlawful in interstate commerce, including on railroads and in schools. 

Like Thurgood Marshall, we examine the law with a novel lens, determined to find a way to escape the shackles of the deadly and unconstitutional policing though more involved federal control and oversight. As often has been the case, remedies available to people aggrieved and disenfranchised by their local and state government have rested in federal oversight. We vow to persist in making The Equality in Policing Act federal law.