Can Congress use threats of conditional preemption to "coerce" states into regulating private persons?

Ilya Somin has a typically well-written and closely reasoned response to my post suggesting that, as a supporter of federalism, he ought to defend a federalism-based reading of the Affordable Care Act. Ilya's reading of New York v. United States is, however, mistaken. According to Ilya, New York holds that Congress can commandeer states by threatening to impose regulatory or tax burdens on private parties, even when those burdens serve no purpose except to act as leverage by which to induce states to regulate private persons according to federal standards.

Ilya construes too broadly New York's imprimatur for conditional preemption of state laws. Of course, New York permits Congress to offer state officials the option of escaping federal preemption of state law by regulating according to federal standards. But New York makes perfectly clear that this choice cannot be compelled. In New York's words, "[w]here Congress encourages state regulation rather than compelling it, state governments remain responsive to the local electorate's preferences in the state's place" (emphasis added). In short, contrary to Ilya's claim, New York is not a nonsensically formalistic opinion that carefully limits one sort of commandeering but gives carte blanche for another functionally identical variety.

The character of this limit on coercion is a complicated question that I addressed in my earlier post. My only point here is that Ilya cannot evade this question by citing New York.