In the 1963 case England et al. v. Louisiana State Board of Medical Examiners et al., chiropractors in Louisiana challenged a state law that prohibited them from practicing without a medical license, arguing it violated their Fourteenth Amendment rights to equal protection and due process. The Supreme Court ruled against the chiropractors, but clarified an important procedural point about federalism: when litigants have both federal constitutional claims and state law claims, they can reserve their federal claims for later review by a federal court while pursuing their state law claims in state court first. This ruling allowed plaintiffs to avoid having potentially unfavorable interpretations of state laws made by Federal courts which could then not be reviewed or changed by any higher authority.

In the dissenting opinion for England et al. v. Louisiana State Board of Medical Examiners et al., Justice Harlan argued that the majority's decision undermined federalism by allowing a party to reserve its federal questions in state court and then return to federal court after an unfavorable ruling. He contended that this practice would lead to unnecessary duplication of judicial effort, as well as confusion and inconsistency in legal proceedings. Furthermore, he believed it was inappropriate for the Supreme Court to intervene in matters traditionally left up to individual states, such as professional licensing regulations. In his view, if parties could easily bypass state courts on their way to federal courts whenever they anticipated an adverse decision at the state level, it would disrupt our system’s delicate balance between national power and states' rights.