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Nature of Suit Code: 890
Nature of Suit: Other Statutory Actions
Cause of Action: 

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United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

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Filed January 25, 2000

No. 98-5491

Navegar, Incorporated, d/b/a Intratec, and

Penn Arms, Incorporated,

Appellants

v.

United States of America,

Appellee

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Before: Edwards, Chief Judge, Silberman, Williams,

Ginsburg, Sentelle, Henderson, Randolph, Rogers, Tatel,

and Garland, Circuit Judges.*

O R D E R

Appellants' petition for rehearing en banc and the response

thereto have been circulated to the full court. The taking of

a vote was requested. Thereafter, a majority of the judges of

the court in regular active service did not vote in favor of the

petition. Upon consideration of the foregoing, it is

ORDERED by the Court that appellants' petition is denied.

Per curiam

For the Court:

Mark J. Langer, Clerk

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* Circuit Judge Sentelle would grant the petition for rehearing

en banc. His opinion is attached.

Sentelle, Circuit Judge, dissenting from the denial of

petition for rehearing en banc: By denying en banc review of

the panel opinion, Navegar, Inc. v. United States, 192 F.3d

1050 (D.C. Cir. 1999), this court perpetuates an approach to

Commerce Clause jurisprudence hopelessly out of date under

contemporary Supreme Court interpretations of the Constitution.

In United States v. Lopez, 514 U.S. 549 (1995), the Supreme Court carefully delineated limitations on the authority

of the federal government to act under that enumerated

power. In his opinion for the five-Justice majority, Chief

Justice Rehnquist identified "three broad categories of activity" within which the federal government may legitimately

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regulate under the commerce power. 514 U.S. at 558. These

three categories are: (1) "the use of the channels of interstate

commerce"; (2) the regulation and protection of "the instrumentalities of interstate commerce, or persons or things in

interstate commerce, even though the threat may come only

from intrastate activities"; and (3) "activities having a substantial relation to interstate commerce." Id. at 558-59 (citations omitted). Because the claimed justification for the

statute before it, the Gun-Free School Zones Act, sheltered

under the umbrella of the third area of activity, the Chief

Justice wrote a further explication of "those activities that

substantially affect interstate commerce." Id. at 559 (citing

Maryland v. Wirtz, 392 U.S. 183, 196 n.27 (1968)). Briefly,

under Lopez, to be the subject of constitutionally valid regulation under the Commerce Clause, an activity not falling

within categories 1 or 2 must substantially affect interstate

commerce, not merely affect it. Id. at 559. To determine

whether an activity substantially affects commerce, we undertake another tripartite examination, asking whether:

--the regulation controls a commercial activity, or an

activity necessary to the regulation of some commercial

activity;

--the statute includes a jurisdictional nexus requirement

to ensure that each regulated instance of the activity

affects interstate commerce; and

--the rationale offered to support the constitutionality of

the statute (i.e., statutory findings, legislative history,

arguments of counsel, or a reviewing court's own attribution of purposes to the statute being challenged) has a

logical stopping point so that the rationale is not so broad

as to regulate on a similar basis all human endeavors,

especially those traditionally regulated by the states.

National Ass'n of Home Builders v. Babbitt, 130 F.3d 1041,

1064 (D.C. Cir. 1997) (Sentelle, J., dissenting) (analyzing

Lopez, 514 U.S. at 559-65, and citing United States v. Wall,

92 F.3d 1444, 1455-56 (6th Cir. 1996) (Boggs, J., dissenting in

part)).

In Lopez, the Court considered the constitutionality of a

statute in which Congress had made it a federal offense "for

any individual knowingly to possess a firearm at a place that

the individual knows, or has reasonable cause to believe, is a

school zone." 18 U.S.C. s 922(q)(1)(A) (Supp. V 1993). The

only justification the United States could offer among the

enumerated powers for the constitutionality of the statute

was the Commerce Clause. Unsurprisingly, the Court held

that the Gun-Free School Zones Act fit none of those three

subcategories. First, it did not regulate or control a commercial activity or an activity necessary to the regulation of a

commercial activity. The Chief Justice acknowledged that

Wickard v. Filburn, 317 U.S. 111 (1942), relied on by the

panel in Navegar, 192 F.3d at 1056-57, had upheld federal

regulation of home consumption of wheat, where it affected

interstate commerce, but described that decision as "perhaps

the most far reaching example of Commerce Clause authority

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over intrastate activity." Lopez, 514 U.S. at 560. The Lopez

Court further recognized that at least the statute before the

Court in Wickard involved the regulation of the wheat market--interstate commerce. Id. at 560-61. In the view of the

Congress, and subsequently the Court of that time, the

regulation of consumable wheat, wherever grown, was necessary to control the volume of wheat on that interstate market.

The Gun-Free School Zones Act neither controlled nor purported to affect any market at all.

Second, the statute included no jurisdictional nexus. Under this element of examination, the Chief Justice compared

United States v. Bass, 404 U.S. 336 (1971), in which the Court

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had upheld the statute making it a crime for a felon "to

receive, possess, or transport in commerce or affecting commerce ... any firearm." Lopez, 514 U.S. at 561-62 (quoting

Bass, 404 U.S. at 337 (brackets omitted)). The Chief Justice

noted that in upholding that statute the Court had expressly

reserved the question of whether Congress could constitutionally regulate the "mere possession" of firearms without the

jurisdictional nexus. Id. at 562 (quoting Bass, 404 U.S. at 339

n.4). Even in Bass, where the statute had withstood constitutional scrutiny, the Court set aside the conviction before it

because the prosecution, while having proved that the defendant possessed a firearm, "failed 'to show the requisite nexus

with interstate commerce.' " Id. (quoting Bass, 404 U.S. at

347). The statute the Court struck down in Lopez had no

such jurisdictional requirement. Congress had invaded the

state-owned territory of mere possession with no connection

to interstate commerce.

Finally, the Lopez Court considered the implications of the

government's argument that guns around schoolhouses might

result in violent crime, and violent crime could be expected to

affect the functioning of the national economy either through

the mechanism of insurance or by reducing the willingness of

individuals to travel to other parts of the country which they

might consider unsafe. The Court highlighted the government's admission that, under this "costs of crime" reasoning,

the federal government could regulate "not only all violent

crime, but all activities that might lead to violent crime,

regardless of how tenuously they relate to interstate commerce." Id. at 564. Indeed, the federal government "could

regulate any activity that [Congress] found was related to the

economic productivity of individual citizens: family law (including marriage, divorce, and child custody), for example."

Id. In other words, under the government's theory of constitutionality for the Gun-Free School Zones Act, the words of

the Commerce Clause were limitless, and Congress had the

power to regulate anything at all. There was no stopping

point. The statute was unconstitutional.

As appellants argue in petitioning for en banc review, the

Navegar panel's decision in the present case is inconsistent

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with the Supreme Court's decision in Lopez. The Navegar

panel had before it an appeal from a judgment denying a

declaratory judgment declaring unconstitutional section

110102 of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement

Act of 1994, Pub. L. No. 103-322, 108 Stat. 1796, 1996-98

(1994) (codified at 18 U.S.C. ss 921(a)(30), 922(v) (1994)).

The disputed section makes it unlawful to "manufacture,

transfer, or possess a semiautomatic assault weapon." 18

U.S.C. s 922(v). In upholding that judgment and the constitutionality of the statute, the panel relied first on the 1942

jurisprudence of Wickard v. Filburn, and then on our decision in Terry v. Reno, 101 F.3d 1412, 1417 (D.C. Cir. 1996),

which upheld the constitutionality of a statute protecting an

area of commerce, specifically health clinics. See Navegar,

192 F.3d at 1056-57. Reno is not on point, but even if it

were, the Supreme Court and not our precedent controls.

Insofar as the Supreme Court's decision in Wickard retains

any vitality after Lopez, it cannot control the ruling on the

disputed statute. Despite the panel's pains to align this

statute with those in Reno and Wickard, ultimately the

statute is indistinguishable from that before the Court in

Lopez. The panel laboriously attempts to fit this gun act into

category 3 of the permissible areas of regulation under Lopez.

To do so, it incorrectly paraphrases the Lopez holding. The

Lopez Court did not, as the panel declares, "conclude[ ] that

Congress had no rational basis for finding that gun possession

in a school zone had a substantial effect on interstate commerce and declare[ ] the statute unconstitutional." Navegar,

192 F.3d at 1055 (citing Lopez, 514 U.S. at 567). Rather, the

Court made an independent determination of the effect of the

statute on interstate commerce, "ultimately a judicial rather

than a legislative question," Lopez, 514 U.S. at 557 n.2. The

Court concluded that gun possession did not have a substantial effect and declared the statute unconstitutional. As one

of our sister circuits recognized, Lopez "elevated to a majority

opinion statements from previous concurring opinions that

'simply because Congress may conclude that a particular

activity substantially affects interstate commerce does not

necessarily make it so.' " Brzonkala v. Virginia Polytechnic

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Inst. and State Univ., 169 F.3d 820, 855 (4th Cir. 1999) (en

banc) (quoting Lopez, 514 U.S. at 557 n.2) (brackets and other

citations omitted), cert. granted sub nom. Brzonkala v. Morrison, 120 S. Ct. 11 (1999).

This statute, like the parallel firearms act stricken as

unconstitutional in Lopez, regulates, under purported authority drawn from Congress's power to regulate interstate commerce, activity (or inactivity) that is neither commerce nor

interstate. The Supreme Court held the Gun-Free School

Zones Act unconstitutional in Lopez. Our panel decision

upholding this statute as constitutional cannot be reconciled

with Lopez, and we should review it en banc.

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