Murphy v. National Collegiate Athletic Association

[Footnotes and some citations are omitted without notation; other textual omissions are marked. Slip-opinion pagination and line-break hyphenation have been removed mechanically.]

JUSTICE ALITO delivered the opinion of the Court.

The State of New Jersey wants to legalize sports gambling at casinos and horseracing tracks, but a federal law, the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act, generally makes it unlawful for a State to “authorize” sports gambling schemes. 28 U. S. C. §3702(1). We must decide whether this provision is compatible with the system of “dual sovereignty” embodied in the Constitution.

I

A

Americans have never been of one mind about gambling, and attitudes have swung back and forth. By the end of the 19th century, gambling was largely banned throughout the country, but beginning in the 1920s and 1930s, laws prohibiting gambling were gradually loosened.

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Sports gambling, however, has long had strong opposition. Opponents argue that it is particularly addictive and especially attractive to young people with a strong interest in sports, and in the past gamblers corrupted and seriously damaged the reputation of professional and amateur sports. Apprehensive about the potential effects of sports gambling, professional sports leagues and the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) long opposed legalization.

B

By the 1990s, there were signs that the trend that had brought about the legalization of many other forms of gambling might extend to sports gambling, and this sparked federal efforts to stem the tide. Opponents of sports gambling turned to the legislation now before us, the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA). 28 U. S. C. §3701 et seq. PASPA’s proponents argued that it would protect young people, and one of the bill’s sponsors, Senator Bill Bradley of New Jersey, a former college and professional basketball star, stressed that the law was needed to safeguard the integrity of sports. The Department of Justice opposed the bill, but it was passed and signed into law.

PASPA’s most important provision, part of which is directly at issue in these cases, makes it “unlawful” for a State or any of its subdivisions “to sponsor, operate, advertise, promote, license, or authorize by law or compact … a lottery, sweepstakes, or other betting, gambling, or wagering scheme based … on” competitive sporting events. §3702(1). In parallel, §3702(2) makes it “unlawful” for “a person to sponsor, operate, advertise, or promote” those same gambling schemes—but only if this is done “pursuant to the law or compact of a governmental entity.” PASPA does not make sports gambling a federal crime (and thus was not anticipated to impose a significant law enforcement burden on the Federal Government). Instead, PASPA allows the Attorney General, as well as professional and amateur sports organizations, to bring civil actions to enjoin violations. §3703.

At the time of PASPA’s adoption, a few jurisdictions allowed some form of sports gambling. In Nevada, sports gambling was legal in casinos, and three States hosted sports lotteries or allowed sports pools. PASPA contains “grandfather” provisions allowing these activities to continue. §3704(a)(1)–(2). Another provision gave New Jersey the option of legalizing sports gambling in Atlantic City—provided that it did so within one year of the law’s effective date. §3704(a)(3).

New Jersey did not take advantage of this special option, but by 2011, with Atlantic City facing stiff competition, the State had a change of heart. New Jersey voters approved an amendment to the State Constitution making it lawful for the legislature to authorize sports gambling, Art. IV, §7, ¶2(D), (F), and in 2012 the legislature enacted a law doing just that, 2011 N. J. Laws p. 1723 (2012 Act).

The 2012 Act quickly came under attack. The major professional sports leagues and the NCAA brought an action in federal court against the New Jersey Governor and other state officials (hereinafter New Jersey), seeking to enjoin the new law on the ground that it violated PASPA. In response, the State argued, among other things, that PASPA unconstitutionally infringed the State’s sovereign authority to end its sports gambling ban. See National Collegiate Athletic Assn. v. Christie, 926 F. Supp. 2d 551, 561 (NJ 2013).

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New Jersey filed a petition for a writ of certiorari, raising the anticommandeering issue. Opposing certiorari, the United States told this Court that PASPA does not require New Jersey “to leave in place the state-law prohibitions against sports gambling that it had chosen to adopt prior to PASPA’s enactment. To the contrary, New Jersey is free to repeal those prohibitions in whole or in part.” […] e denied review. Christie v. National Collegiate Athletic Assn., 573 U. S. ___ (2014).

Picking up on the suggestion that a partial repeal would be allowed, the New Jersey Legislature enacted the law now before us. 2014 N. J. Laws p. 602 (2014 Act). The 2014 Act declares that it is not to be interpreted as causing the State to authorize, license, sponsor, operate, advertise, or promote sports gambling. Ibid. Instead, it is framed as a repealer. Specifically, it repeals the provisions of state law prohibiting sports gambling insofar as they concerned the “placement and acceptance of wagers” on sporting events by persons 21 years of age or older at a horseracing track or a casino or gambling house in Atlantic City. Ibid. The new law also specified that the repeal was effective only as to wagers on sporting events not involving a New Jersey college team or a collegiate event taking place in the State. Ibid.

Predictably, the same plaintiffs promptly commenced a new action in federal court. They won in the District Court, National Collegiate Athletic Assn. v. Christie, 61 F. Supp. 3d 488 (NJ 2014), and the case was eventually heard by the Third Circuit sitting en banc. The en banc court affirmed, finding that the new law, no less than the old one, violated PASPA by “author[izing]” sports gambling. National Collegiate Athletic Assn. v. Governor of N. J., 832 F. 3d 389 (2016) (case below). The court was unmoved by the New Jersey Legislature’s “artful[]” attempt to frame the 2014 Act as a repealer. Id., at 397. […] But the court declined to say whether a repeal that was more complete than the 2014 Act would still amount to an authorization. The court observed that a partial repeal that allowed only “de minimis wagers between friends and family would not have nearly the type of authorizing effect” that it found in the 2014 Act, and it added: “We need not … articulate a line whereby a partial repeal of a sports wagering ban amounts to an authorization under PASPA, if indeed such a line could be drawn.” Id., at 402 (emphasis added).

Having found that the 2014 Act violates PASPA’s prohibition of state authorization of sports gambling schemes, the court went on to hold that this prohibition does not contravene the anticommandeering principle because it “does not command states to take affirmative actions.” Id., at 401.

We granted review to decide the important constitutional question presented by these cases, sub nom. Christie v. National Collegiate Athletic Assn., 582 U. S. ___ (2017).

II

Before considering the constitutionality of the PASPA provision prohibiting States from “author[izing]” sports gambling, we first examine its meaning. The parties advance dueling interpretations, and this dispute has an important bearing on the constitutional issue that we must decide. Neither respondents nor the United States, appearing as an amicus in support of respondents, contends that the provision at issue would be constitutional if petitioners’ interpretation is correct. Indeed, the United States expressly concedes that the provision is unconstitutional if it means what petitioners claim. Brief for United States 8, 19.

A

Petitioners argue that the anti-authorization provision requires States to maintain their existing laws against sports gambling without alteration. One of the accepted meanings of the term “authorize,” they point out, is “permit.” Brief for Petitioners in No. 16–476, p. 42 (citing Black’s Law Dictionary 133 (6th ed. 1990); Webster’s Third New International Dictionary 146 (1992)). They therefore contend that any state law that has the effect of permitting sports gambling, including a law totally or partially repealing a prior prohibition, amounts to an authorization. Brief for Petitioners in No. 16–476, at 42.

Respondents interpret the provision more narrowly. They claim that the primary definition of “authorize” requires affirmative action. Brief for Respondents 39. To authorize, they maintain, means “ ‘[t]o empower; to give a right or authority to act; to endow with authority.’ ” Ibid. (quoting Black’s Law Dictionary, at 133). And this, they say, is precisely what the 2014 Act does: It empowers a defined group of entities, and it endows them with the authority to conduct sports gambling operations.

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B

In our view, petitioners’ interpretation is correct: When a State completely or partially repeals old laws banning sports gambling, it “authorize[s]” that activity. This is clear when the state-law landscape at the time of PASPA’s enactment is taken into account. At that time, all forms of sports gambling were illegal in the great majority of States, and in that context, the competing definitions offered by the parties lead to the same conclusion. The repeal of a state law banning sports gambling not only “permits” sports gambling (petitioners’ favored definition); it also gives those now free to conduct a sports betting operation the “right or authority to act”; it “empowers” them (respondents’ and the United States’s definition).

The concept of state “authorization” makes sense only against a backdrop of prohibition or regulation. A State is not regarded as authorizing everything that it does not prohibit or regulate. No one would use the term in that way. For example, no one would say that a State “authorizes” its residents to brush their teeth or eat apples or sing in the shower. We commonly speak of state authorization only if the activity in question would otherwise be restricted.

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The interpretation adopted by the Third Circuit and advocated by respondents and the United States not only ignores the situation that Congress faced when it enacted PASPA but also leads to results that Congress is most unlikely to have wanted. This is illustrated by the implausible conclusions that all of those favoring alternative interpretations have been forced to reach about the extent to which the provision permits the repeal of laws banning sports gambling.

The Third Circuit could not say which, if any, partial repeals are allowed. 832 F. 3d, at 402. Respondents and the United States tell us that the PASPA ban on state authorization allows complete repeals, but beyond that they identify no clear line. It is improbable that Congress meant to enact such a nebulous regime.

C

The respondents and United States argue that even if there is some doubt about the correctness of their interpretation of the anti-authorization provision, that interpretation should be adopted in order to avoid any anticommandeering problem that would arise if the provision were construed to require States to maintain their laws prohibiting sports gambling. Brief for Respondents 38; Brief for United States 19. They invoke the canon of interpretation that a statute should not be held to be unconstitutional if there is any reasonable interpretation that can save it. See Jennings v. Rodriguez, 583 U. S. ___, ___ (2018) (slip op., at 12). The plausibility of the alternative interpretations is debatable, but even if the law could be interpreted as respondents and the United States suggest, it would still violate the anticommandeering principle, as we now explain.

III

A

The anticommandeering doctrine may sound arcane, but it is simply the expression of a fundamental structural decision incorporated into the Constitution, i.e., the decision to withhold from Congress the power to issue orders directly to the States. When the original States declared their independence, they claimed the powers inherent in sovereignty—in the words of the Declaration of Independence, the authority “to do all … Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do.” ¶32. The Constitution limited but did not abolish the sovereign powers of the States, which retained “a residuary and inviolable sovereignty.” The Federalist No. 39, p. 245 (C. Rossiter ed. 1961). Thus, both the Federal Government and the States wield sovereign powers, and that is why our system of government is said to be one of “dual sovereignty.” Gregory v. Ashcroft, 501 U. S. 452, 457 (1991).

The Constitution limits state sovereignty in several ways. It directly prohibits the States from exercising some attributes of sovereignty. See, e.g., Art. I, §10. Some grants of power to the Federal Government have been held to impose implicit restrictions on the States. See, e.g., Department of Revenue of Ky. v. Davis, 553 U. S. 328 (2008); American Ins. Assn. v. Garamendi, 539 U. S. 396 (2003). And the Constitution indirectly restricts the States by granting certain legislative powers to Congress, see Art. I, §8, while providing in the Supremacy Clause that federal law is the “supreme Law of the Land … any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding,” Art. VI, cl. 2. This means that when federal and state law conflict, federal law prevails and state law is preempted.

The legislative powers granted to Congress are sizable, but they are not unlimited. The Constitution confers on Congress not plenary legislative power but only certain enumerated powers. Therefore, all other legislative power is reserved for the States, as the Tenth Amendment confirms. And conspicuously absent from the list of powers given to Congress is the power to issue direct orders to the governments of the States. The anticommandeering doctrine simply represents the recognition of this limit on congressional authority.

Although the anticommandeering principle is simple and basic, it did not emerge in our cases until relatively recently, when Congress attempted in a few isolated instances to extend its authority in unprecedented ways. The pioneering case was New York v. United States, 505 U. S. 144 (1992), which concerned a federal law that required a State, under certain circumstances, either to “take title” to low-level radioactive waste or to “regulat[e] according to the instructions of Congress.” Id., at 175. In enacting this provision, Congress issued orders to either the legislative or executive branch of state government (depending on the branch authorized by state law to take the actions demanded). Either way, the Court held, the provision was unconstitutional because “the Constitution does not empower Congress to subject state governments to this type of instruction.” Id., at 176.

Justice O’Connor’s opinion for the Court traced this rule to the basic structure of government established under the Constitution. The Constitution, she noted, “confers upon Congress the power to regulate individuals, not States.” Id., at 166. In this respect, the Constitution represented a sharp break from the Articles of Confederation. “Under the Articles of Confederation, Congress lacked the authority in most respects to govern the people directly.” Id., at 163. Instead, Congress was limited to acting “ ‘only upon the States.’ ” Id., at 162 (quoting Lane County v. Oregon, 7 Wall. 71, 76 (1869)). Alexander Hamilton, among others, saw this as “ ‘[t]he great and radical vice in … the existing Confederation.’ ” 505 U. S., at 163 (quoting The Federalist No. 15, at 108). The Constitutional Convention considered plans that would have preserved this basic structure, but it rejected them in favor of a plan under which “Congress would exercise its legislative authority directly over individuals rather than over States.” 505 U. S., at 165.

As to what this structure means with regard to Congress’s authority to control state legislatures, New York was clear and emphatic. The opinion recalled that “no Member of the Court ha[d] ever suggested” that even “a particularly strong federal interest” “would enable Congress to command a state government to enact state regulation.” Id., at 178 (emphasis in original). “We have always understood that even where Congress has the authority under the Constitution to pass laws requiring or prohibiting certain acts, it lacks the power directly to compel the States to require or prohibit those acts.” Id., at 166. “Congress may not simply ‘commandee[r] the legislative processes of the States by directly compelling them to enact and enforce a federal regulatory program.’ ” Id., at 161 (quoting Hodel v. Virginia Surface Mining & Reclamation Assn., Inc., 452 U. S. 264, 288 (1981)). “Where a federal interest is sufficiently strong to cause Congress to legislate, it must do so directly; it may not conscript state governments as its agents.” 505 U. S., at 178.

Five years after New York, the Court applied the same principles to a federal statute requiring state and local law enforcement officers to perform background checks and related tasks in connection with applications for handgun licenses. Printz, 521 U. S. 898. Holding this provision unconstitutional, the Court put the point succinctly: “The Federal Government” may not “command the States’ officers, or those of their political subdivisions, to administer or enforce a federal regulatory program.” Id., at 935. This rule applies, Printz held, not only to state officers with policymaking responsibility but also to those assigned more mundane tasks. Id., at 929–930.

B

Our opinions in New York and Printz explained why adherence to the anticommandeering principle is important. Without attempting a complete survey, we mention several reasons that are significant here.

First, the rule serves as “one of the Constitution’s structural protections of liberty.” Printz, supra, at 921. “The Constitution does not protect the sovereignty of States for the benefit of the States or state governments as abstract political entities.” New York, supra, at 181. “To the contrary, the Constitution divides authority between federal and state governments for the protection of individuals.” Ibid. “ ‘[A] healthy balance of power between the States and the Federal Government [reduces] the risk of tyranny and abuse from either front.’ ” Id., at 181–182 (quoting Gregory, 501 U. S., at 458).

Second, the anticommandeering rule promotes political accountability. When Congress itself regulates, the responsibility for the benefits and burdens of the regulation is apparent. Voters who like or dislike the effects of the regulation know who to credit or blame. By contrast, if a State imposes regulations only because it has been commanded to do so by Congress, responsibility is blurred. See New York, supra, at 168–169; Printz, supra, at 929– 930.

Third, the anticommandeering principle prevents Congress from shifting the costs of regulation to the States. If Congress enacts a law and requires enforcement by the Executive Branch, it must appropriate the funds needed to administer the program. It is pressured to weigh the expected benefits of the program against its costs. But if Congress can compel the States to enact and enforce its program, Congress need not engage in any such analysis. See, e.g., E. Young, Two Cheers for Process Federalism, 46 Vill. L. Rev. 1349, 1360–1361 (2001).

IV

A

The PASPA provision at issue here—prohibiting state authorization of sports gambling—violates the anticommandeering rule. That provision unequivocally dictates what a state legislature may and may not do. And this is true under either our interpretation or that advocated by respondents and the United States. In either event, state legislatures are put under the direct control of Congress. It is as if federal officers were installed in state legislative chambers and were armed with the authority to stop legislators from voting on any offending proposals. A more direct affront to state sovereignty is not easy to imagine.

Neither respondents nor the United States contends that Congress can compel a State to enact legislation, but they say that prohibiting a State from enacting new laws is another matter. See Brief for Respondents 19; Brief for United States 12. Noting that the laws challenged in New York and Printz “told states what they must do instead of what they must not do,” respondents contend that commandeering occurs “only when Congress goes beyond precluding state action and affirmatively commands it.” Brief for Respondents 19 (emphasis deleted).

This distinction is empty. It was a matter of happenstance that the laws challenged in New York and Printz commanded “affirmative” action as opposed to imposing a prohibition. The basic principle—that Congress cannot issue direct orders to state legislatures—applies in either event.

Here is an illustration. PASPA includes an exemption for States that permitted sports betting at the time of enactment, §3704, but suppose Congress did not adopt such an exemption. Suppose Congress ordered States with legalized sports betting to take the affirmative step of criminalizing that activity and ordered the remaining States to retain their laws prohibiting sports betting. There is no good reason why the former would intrude more deeply on state sovereignty than the latter.

B

Respondents and the United States claim that prior decisions of this Court show that PASPA’s anti-authorization provision is constitutional, but they misread those cases. In none of them did we uphold the constitutionality of a federal statute that commanded state legislatures to enact or refrain from enacting state law.

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In sum, none of the prior decisions on which respondents and the United States rely involved federal laws that commandeered the state legislative process. None concerned laws that directed the States either to enact or to refrain from enacting a regulation of the conduct of activities occurring within their borders. Therefore, none of these precedents supports the constitutionality of the PASPA provision at issue here.

V

Respondents and the United States defend the anti-authorization prohibition on the ground that it constitutes a valid preemption provision, but it is no such thing. Preemption is based on the Supremacy Clause, and that Clause is not an independent grant of legislative power to Congress. Instead, it simply provides “a rule of decision.” Armstrong v. Exceptional Child Center, Inc., 575 U. S. ___, ___ (2015) (slip op., at 3). It specifies that federal law is supreme in case of a conflict with state law. Therefore, in order for the PASPA provision to preempt state law, it must satisfy two requirements. First, it must represent the exercise of a power conferred on Congress by the Constitution; pointing to the Supremacy Clause will not do. Second, since the Constitution “confers upon Congress the power to regulate individuals, not States,” New York, 505 U. S., at 166, the PASPA provision at issue must be best read as one that regulates private actors.

Our cases have identified three different types of preemption—“conflict,” “express,” and “field,” see English v. General Elec. Co., 496 U. S. 72, 78–79 (1990)—but all of them work in the same way: Congress enacts a law that imposes restrictions or confers rights on private actors; a state law confers rights or imposes restrictions that conflict with the federal law; and therefore the federal law takes precedence and the state law is preempted.

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“Express preemption” operates in essentially the same way, but this is often obscured by the language used by Congress in framing preemption provisions. The provision at issue in Morales v. Trans World Airlines, Inc., 504 U. S. 374 (1992), is illustrative. The Airline Deregulation Act of 1978 lifted prior federal regulations of airlines, and “[t]o ensure that the States would not undo federal deregulation with regulation of their own,” id., at 378, the Act provided that “no State or political subdivision thereof … shall enact or enforce any law, rule, regulation, standard, or other provision having the force and effect of law relating to rates, routes, or services of any [covered] air carrier.” 49 U. S. C. App. §1305(a)(1) (1988 ed.).

This language might appear to operate directly on the States, but it is a mistake to be confused by the way in which a preemption provision is phrased. As we recently explained, “we do not require Congress to employ a particular linguistic formulation when preempting state law.” Coventry Health Care of Mo., Inc. v. Nevils, 581 U. S. ___, – (2017) (slip op., at 10–11). And if we look beyond the phrasing employed in the Airline Deregulation Act’s preemption provision, it is clear that this provision operates just like any other federal law with preemptive effect. It confers on private entities (i.e., covered carriers) a federal right to engage in certain conduct subject only to certain (federal) constraints.

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In sum, regardless of the language sometimes used by Congress and this Court, every form of preemption is based on a federal law that regulates the conduct of private actors, not the States.

Once this is understood, it is clear that the PASPA provision prohibiting state authorization of sports gambling is not a preemption provision because there is no way in which this provision can be understood as a regulation of private actors. It certainly does not confer any federal rights on private actors interested in conducting sports gambling operations. (It does not give them a federal right to engage in sports gambling.) Nor does it impose any federal restrictions on private actors. If a private citizen or company started a sports gambling operation, either with or without state authorization, §3702(1) would not be violated and would not provide any ground for a civil action by the Attorney General or any other party. Thus, there is simply no way to understand the provision prohibiting state authorization as anything other than a direct command to the States. And that is exactly what the anticommandeering rule does not allow.

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The legalization of sports gambling is a controversial subject. Supporters argue that legalization will produce revenue for the States and critically weaken illegal sports betting operations, which are often run by organized crime. Opponents contend that legalizing sports gambling will hook the young on gambling, encourage people of modest means to squander their savings and earnings, and corrupt professional and college sports.

The legalization of sports gambling requires an important policy choice, but the choice is not ours to make. Congress can regulate sports gambling directly, but if it elects not to do so, each State is free to act on its own. Our job is to interpret the law Congress has enacted and decide whether it is consistent with the Constitution. PASPA is not. PASPA “regulate[s] state governments’ regulation” of their citizens, New York, 505 U. S., at 166. The Constitution gives Congress no such power.

The judgment of the Third Circuit is reversed.

It is so ordered.

Notes & Questions

1. Where, exactly, does the anticommandeering rule come from? Justice Alito does not claim that any clause of the Constitution forbids direct federal orders to state governments; the Tenth Amendment merely “confirms” a limit he locates in the enumeration of powers itself and in the Convention’s choice of a national government that acts on individuals rather than on States. Is that an argument from text, from structure, from history, or from the consequences the opinion lists — liberty, accountability, cost-shifting? Does your answer affect how far the rule should reach?

2. Before Murphy, a careful lawyer could read New York and Printz as cases about affirmative conscription: Congress had ordered state legislatures to legislate and state officers to administer a federal program. PASPA ordered New Jersey to do nothing at all — the Third Circuit stressed that no state official had to lift a finger. Why does the majority treat a federal prohibition on state lawmaking as the same intrusion as a federal command to make law? Is it the same? Consider what each kind of statute does to a legislature’s agenda, to its budget, and to its accountability to voters. Then test your intuition against the majority’s own inversion: is a statute ordering States to keep their gambling bans really different from one forbidding them to repeal those bans?

3. A hypothetical. Alarmed by state experimentation, Congress enacts the State Drug Law Preservation Act: “No State may enact or give effect to any law legalizing, decriminalizing, or reducing the penalties applicable to the possession or distribution of marijuana.” Constitutional after Murphy? Now redraft the statute: Congress instead directly criminalizes marijuana possession nationwide and preempts conflicting state law — roughly what the Controlled Substances Act already does. As a practical matter, can a State still “legalize”? What does this pair of statutes tell you about what Murphy actually protects: state policy outcomes, or only the formal channels of state lawmaking? Is the second something worth a constitutional doctrine?

4. Take aim at Part V. The majority announces that every valid preemption provision — conflict, express, or field — is “best read” as a regulation of private actors, and that PASPA fails because it confers no federal right and imposes no federal restriction on any private person. Is that a fair description of the preemption cases, or a new rule dressed up as one? The Airline Deregulation Act provision the Court discusses is drafted as a flat command to States, yet it survives because the Court can re-describe it as conferring federal rights on airlines. Could a competent drafter re-describe PASPA the same way — say, by conferring on sports leagues a federal right to be free from state-sanctioned betting on their games? If artful redrafting can always convert a forbidden command into a valid preemption provision, what work does Murphy do? If it cannot, which existing federal statutes are now in doubt?

5. Murphy’s logic reaches any federal statute whose object is to freeze state law in place. Consider three: (a) the Internet Tax Freedom Act, which provides that no State may impose taxes on internet access; (b) a federal statute barring a State from withdrawing from an interstate compact it has joined; (c) a grandfather clause that exempts States from a federal scheme only so long as they retain the state law they had on a fixed date. Which of these issues a direct order to a state legislature, and which regulates private actors or merely attaches consequences to state choices? Does Murphy give you a workable way to tell — or just a drafting manual?

6. Finally, hold the majority’s accountability rationale up against PASPA itself. The theory is that when Congress makes States do its work, voters blame the wrong government. But New Jersey’s voters amended their constitution, their legislature acted twice, and their officials fought the sports leagues through a decade of litigation — no one in New Jersey seems to have been confused about who was blocking sports betting. Does the accountability argument fit a statute that forbids rather than commands? If not, which of the opinion’s three justifications is doing the real work — and is it enough?