The National Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984 (23 U.S.C. § 158) was passed on July 17, 1984. It was a controversial bill that punished every state that allowed persons below 21 years to purchase and publicly possess alcoholic beverages by reducing its annual federal highway apportionment by ten percent. The law was later amended, lowering the penalty to eight percent from fiscal year 2012 and beyond. The act was expressly upheld as constitutional in 1987 by the United States Supreme Court in South Dakota v. Dole.