In such conflicts, the democratic state — not competing authorities such as churches — has final sovereign authority. (blog.politics.ox.ac.uk)
The other practical implication comes from recognizing that responsibility itself is closely linked to the ways in which we understand sovereign authority, and our understandings of authority are closely linked to ways of experiencing the divine. (religion-online.org)
Under Supreme Court constitutional interpretation, since individual states never had the original sovereign authority to unilaterally change the terms and conditions of service of federal officials agreed to and established in the Constitution, such a power could not be «reserved» under the Tenth Amendment. (politics.stackexchange.com)