Opinion ID: 167660
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Activities Substantially Affecting Interstate Commerce

Text: 16 Under the third category, Congress may regulate activities that substantially affect interstate commerce. Lopez, 514 U.S. at 558-59, 115 S.Ct. 1624; Raich, 125 S.Ct. at 2205. This is the most unsettled, and most frequently disputed, of the categories. Under the first two categories Congress may regulate or protect actual interstate commerce; the third allows Congress to regulate intrastate noncommercial activity, based on its effects. 17 Consideration of effects necessarily involves matters of degree. The third category thus poses not two hazards, like Scylla and Charybdis, but three. If we entertain too expansive an understanding of effects, the Constitution's enumeration of powers becomes meaningless and federal power becomes effectively limitless. If we entertain too narrow an understanding, Congress is stripped of its enumerated power, reinforced by the Necessary and Proper Clause, to protect and control commerce among the several states. If we employ too nebulous a standard, we exacerbate the risk that judges will substitute their own subjective or political calculus for that of the elected representatives of the people, or will appear to be doing so. 18 The Supreme Court's decisions in Lopez, United States v. Morrison, 529 U.S. 598, 609, 120 S.Ct. 1740, 146 L.Ed.2d 658 (2000), and Raich all hinged on interpretation of the third category. Under this category we have upheld statutes that prohibit the production of child pornography and the possession of machine guns. Jeronimo-Bautista, 425 F.3d 1266 (upholding 18 U.S.C. § 2251(a), which prohibits the production of child pornography with materials that moved in interstate commerce); United States v. Wilks, 58 F.3d 1518, 1521-22 (10th Cir.1995) (upholding 18 U.S.C. § 922(o), which prohibits the possession of machine guns). 4 The question in such cases is whether Congress had a rational basis to find that the regulated activity, taken in the aggregate, would substantially affect interstate commerce. Raich, 125 S.Ct. at 2208. To answer that question, we consider whether (1) the activity at which the statute is directed is commercial or economic in nature; (2) the statute contains an express jurisdictional element involving interstate activity that might limit its reach; (3) Congress has made specific findings regarding the effects of the prohibited activity on interstate commerce; and (4) the link between the prohibited conduct and a substantial effect on interstate commerce is attenuated. United States v. Grimmett, 439 F.3d 1263, 1272 (10th Cir.2006) (facial challenge); see also Jeronimo-Bautista, 425 F.3d at 1269 (as-applied challenge). The first factor determines whether the regulated activity falls within the definition of commerce. If so, in light of the substantial integration of the American economy in the past two centuries, there is a heavy — perhaps in reality irrebuttable — presumption that it affects more states than one, and falls within congressional power. See Lopez, 514 U.S. at 574, 115 S.Ct. 1624 (Kennedy, J., concurring) (Congress can regulate in the commercial sphere on the assumption that we have a single market and a unified purpose to build a stable national economy.). Where the regulated activity is noncommercial, the last three factors are significant. They look to three different sources of evidence regarding whether there is a substantial effect on interstate commerce: the statutory text, the articulated congressional understanding, and independent evidence of whether the activity has a substantial effect in the aggregate. We will discuss each of these factors, but not in the above-listed order.
19 We first consider whether the prohibited activity is commercial or economic. Jeronimo-Bautista, 425 F.3d at 1269. The Constitution gives Congress the power [t]o regulate Commerce . . . among the several States. U.S. Const. art. I, § 8, cl. 3. The distinction between what is and is not commercial therefore lies at the heart of the Commerce Clause. Of course, like many constitutional terms, the meaning of commerce is neither obvious nor uncontested. The Supreme Court has warned against a definition under which any activity can be looked upon as commercial, since this would obliterate the intended limits on federal power. Lopez, 514 U.S. at 565, 115 S.Ct. 1624. The best historical scholarship indicates that in addition to its primary sense of buying, selling, and transporting merchandise, the term commerce was understood at the Founding to include the compensated provision of services as well as activities in preparation for selling property or services in the marketplace, such as the production of goods for sale. See Grant S. Nelson & Robert J. Pushaw, Jr., Rethinking the Commerce Clause: Applying First Principles to Uphold Federal Commercial Regulations but Preserve State Control over Social Issues, 85 Iowa L.Rev. 1, 9-42, 107-110 (1999) (citing, among other sources, Daniel Defoe, A Plan of the English Commerce (2d ed. 1730), Adam Smith, An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776), The Federalist No. 11 (Alexander Hamilton) (Jacob E. Cooke ed., 1961), and 2 Records of the Federal Convention 449-50 (Max Farrand ed., 1911) (statement of Charles Pinckney)). 5 In Gibbons v. Ogden, 22 U.S. (9 Wheat.) 1, 189-90, 6 L.Ed. 23 (1824), Chief Justice Marshall referred to commerce as a general term, applicable to many objects.... Commerce, undoubtedly, is traffic, but it is something more.... It describes the commercial intercourse between nations, and parts of nations, in all its branches. In the usage of the time, the `branches' of `commercial intercourse' referred to activities integrally related to trade, such as transportation, production, labor, banking, and insurance. Robert J. Pushaw, Jr., The Medical Marijuana Case: A Commerce Clause Counter-Revolution?, 9 Lewis & Clark L.Rev. 879, 887 (2005). 20 In Lopez, the Court held that possession of firearms, in itself, is not commercial or economic. 514 U.S. at 560, 115 S.Ct. 1624 (concluding that the prohibition on firearm possession near a school by its terms has nothing to do with `commerce' or any sort of economic enterprise). That makes sense, because the mere possession of a firearm does not constitute the buying, selling, production, or transportation of products or services, or any activity preparatory to it. See United States v. Price, 265 F.3d 1097, 1107 (10th Cir.2001) (contrasting the statutes in Lopez and Morrison, which criminalized non-economic behavior, with 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1), which makes it illegal to manufacture, distribute, or dispense, or possess with intent to manufacture, distribute, or dispense a controlled substance — activities that are economic in character). The Lopez Court's conclusion on this point was restated and reaffirmed in Raich, 125 S.Ct. at 2211, and we therefore regard it as settled. The same conclusion must follow for the possession of body armor. We can think of no reason that mere possession of body armor by a felon would be deemed commercial when the mere possession of a firearm near a school was not. 21 We recognize that in Raich, the Court interpreted the contours of the third category by reference to economics rather than commerce, and included the consumption of commodities as well as their production and distribution within that definition. Id. (internal quotation marks omitted). That does not alter our conclusion. First, we are bound by the holding of Lopez, reaffirmed in Raich, that the mere possession of firearms near a school is not a commercial activity for purposes of the third category. Second, possession of firearms or body armor cannot be described as consumption. Consumption is the act of destroying a thing by using it; the use of a thing in a way that thereby exhausts it, Black's Law Dictionary 336 (8th ed.2004), and possessing or wearing body armor neither destroys nor exhausts it. Finally, we note that the Raich opinion as a whole treats congressional authority over the domestic consumption of marijuana as within the third category only because it was connected to a comprehensive national ban on the production, distribution, and consumption of commodities for which there is an established, and lucrative, interstate market. Raich, 125 S.Ct. at 2211. The Controlled Substances Act, the statute at issue in Raich, prohibited possession of marijuana as a means of regulating commerce in that product. Id. We do not interpret Raich as holding that Congress may criminalize the mere possession of a commodity for the purpose of consumption, divorced from such a comprehensive regulatory scheme, based on the third category. 22 Our conclusion that the possession of body armor is not a commercial activity does not end the inquiry, but it does channel our analysis. Where the regulated activity is commercial in nature, it generally (perhaps invariably) follows that, aggregated with similar activities elsewhere, the activity affects the national economy sufficiently to fall within congressional power. See, e.g., United States v. Sullivan, 332 U.S. 689, 698, 68 S.Ct. 331, 92 L.Ed. 297 (1948) (upholding application of the misbranding provision of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act to local sales of drugs); Perez, 402 U.S. at 156-57, 91 S.Ct. 1357 (upholding federal law against loan sharking). But where the regulated activity is not commercial in nature, Congress may regulate it only where there are substantial and not attenuated effects on other states, on the national economy, or on the ability of Congress to regulate interstate commerce. Morrison, 529 U.S. at 614-16, 120 S.Ct. 1740. In considering that question, we give special deference to any findings Congress may have made regarding the connection of the statute to interstate commerce, and we assess the effect of any jurisdictional hook that may confine application of the statute to situations affecting interstate commerce. We ask not whether, as judges, we believe the challenged statute has a substantial effect on interstate commerce, but whether Congress could reasonably have thought so.
23 Where possession of an item is not a commercial activity in itself, it may nonetheless have a substantial and non-attenuated effect on interstate commerce in two ways. First, possession of a good is related to the market for that good, and Congress may regulate possession as a necessary and proper means of controlling its supply or demand. For example, the federal government may elect to prohibit the possession of eagle feathers as a practical means of drying up the market for them, and thus protecting against the killing of eagles. Andrus v. Allard, 444 U.S. 51, 58, 100 S.Ct. 318, 62 L.Ed.2d 210 (1979). Second, possession of a good is related to the use of that good, and its use may have effects on interstate commerce. For example, no one would doubt Congress's authority to prohibit the civilian possession of surface-to-air missile launchers, on the theory that their only possible use would substantially affect interstate commerce. We will examine both possibilities, in light of Supreme Court precedents in analogous cases. 24 a. Regulation of possession as a means of regulating the interstate market for body armor 25 In Raich, 125 S.Ct. at 2211, and earlier in Wickard v. Filburn, 317 U.S. 111, 127-28, 63 S.Ct. 82, 87 L.Ed. 122 (1942), the Supreme Court upheld the authority of Congress to prohibit the domestic consumption of a home-grown commodity, where that prohibition was an indirect and supplemental, but still essential, means of enforcing regulations on the national market in that commodity. In Raich, the Court concluded that noncommercial possession of home-grown marijuana for personal medical use, as authorized by state law, could rationally be considered an inseparable part of the broader, and undeniably commercial, national market for marijuana. 125 S.Ct. at 2211. Under the Controlled Substances Act, the manufacture, distribution, possession, and use of marijuana are illegal. Id. Because of the difficulty of distinguishing home-grown marijuana consumed for medical reasons from other marijuana, and the constant possibility of its diversion into illicit channels, the Court concluded that Congress could rationally believe that medical marijuana, if exempted from the Act, would significantly increase the supply of marijuana and that some of this marijuana would move in interstate commerce. Id. at 2213-14. The Court distinguished Lopez and Morrison on the ground that the challenged provisions in those cases were not part of a comprehensive regulation of economic activity. Id. at 2209-11. 26 In the statute at issue in Wickard, Congress enacted a comprehensive program limiting the production of certain agricultural commodities for the purpose of raising their market price. 317 U.S. at 125-27. The Court upheld application of those regulations to wheat produced by a farmer for his own family's domestic and livestock consumption, on the theory that allowing farmers to evade the production restrictions, when consuming wheat for their own use, would undermine the economic objectives of the entire program. Id. at 127-28, 63 S.Ct. 82. 27 In both Raich and Wickard, the regulation of domestic possession and use was justified on the basis of its impact on a comprehensive regulatory scheme directed at interstate production, distribution, and sale. By contrast, in Lopez, where there was no such connection to a comprehensive regulation of the national market, the Court made clear that Congress could not reach mere possession under the Commerce Clause. 514 U.S. at 560, 115 S.Ct. 1624 (Section 922(g) is not an essential part of a larger regulation of economic activity, in which the regulatory scheme would be undercut unless the intrastate activity were regulated.). 28 This Court has used the same rationale to sustain congressional prohibitions on the production and possession of child pornography. In Jeronimo-Bautista and Grimmett, this Court held that Congress has authority under the Commerce Clause to prohibit mere possession of child pornography, on the rationale that prohibiting possession was an essential part of a comprehensive scheme to destroy the market for this pernicious commodity. Grimmett, 439 F.3d at 1272; Jeronimo-Bautista, 425 F.3d at 1271. Thus, although possession of child pornography might in some cases be intrastate and noncommercial, prohibiting it across the board can be an indirect and supplemental, but still essential, means of controlling the interstate commercial market. Accord United States v. Maxwell, 446 F.3d 1210, 1215 (11th Cir. 2006) ([W]here Congress comprehensively regulates economic activity, it may constitutionally regulate intrastate activity, whether economic or not, so long as the inability to do so would undermine Congress's ability to implement effectively the overlying economic regulatory scheme.). 29 Where the statute is not part of a comprehensive scheme of regulation, however, the Court has not upheld federal regulation of purely intrastate noneconomic activity. See Morrison, 529 U.S. at 610, 120 S.Ct. 1740 (indicating that the noneconomic, criminal nature of the conduct at issue in Lopez was central to [the] decision); id. at 613, 115 S.Ct. 1624 (noting that the Supreme Court had upheld Commerce Clause regulation of intrastate activity only where that activity [was] economic in nature); Raich, 125 S.Ct. at 2210 (noting that in Morrison the Court held the statute unconstitutional because, like the statute in Lopez, it did not regulate economic activity); id. at 2211 (upholding a statute that directly regulates economic, commercial activity). 30 We must therefore determine whether the prohibition on possession of body armor by felons is an essential part of comprehensive legislation to regulate the interstate market in a fungible commodity. Raich, 125 S.Ct. at 2209. It is not. In contrast to its comprehensive ban on marijuana under the Controlled Substances Act, Congress has not prohibited the manufacture, distribution, sale, possession, or use of body armor. Members of the U.S. military, federal agents of the CIA and FBI, local police officers, security guards, hunters, convenience store owners — all non-felons — are free to buy, own, and possess body armor. Companies are free to produce and sell it. The prohibition of possession by a small class of persons, felons, is unrelated to any broader attempt to suppress the market (as in Raich, Jeronimo-Bautista, or Grimmett ) or to comprehensively control supply (as in Wickard ). Even with respect to felons, the statute's non-commercial focus is clear from what goes unpunished. No one violates the law by selling to a felon or buying from a felon, and felons themselves may sell body armor previously acquired or use it in the course of their licit occupations. 18 U.S.C. § 931(b)(1). 31 Moreover, in this case, Mr. Patton acquired his bulletproof vest at a time when possession of body armor by felons was lawful. Here, therefore, there is no logical connection — not even an attenuated one — between his possession and the body armor market. Since it was lawful for him to purchase and possess the armor when he bought it, prohibition of continued possession cannot contribute, even indirectly, to regulating the market. Cf. United States v. Marrero, 299 F.3d 653, 655-56 (7th Cir.2002) ([W]e are in a new era and must be wary of such arguments as that the theft of a bottle of aspirin from a person's home `affects' commerce, provided only that the bottle was shipped from another state, because the homeowner would be likely to buy another bottle from his local druggist to replace the one that was stolen and the druggist would replace that sale by purchasing another bottle interstate.). 32 Nor does it matter that body armor is subject to pervasive regulation by the states, as discussed below. Such regulation of a commodity is not enough to establish a comprehensive regulatory scheme, because this was surely present in Lopez and the states and the federal government regulate firearms more extensively than body armor. See Anthony A. Braga et al., The Illegal Supply of Firearms, 29 Crime & Just. 319, 321-24 (2002) (describing the extensive regulation of firearms). Like the statute in Lopez, section 931 regulates possession for its own sake and cannot be justified as part (much less as an essential part) of a comprehensive regulation of the market in body armor. 33 b. Regulation of possession as a means of controlling uses that might affect interstate commerce 34 The second way in which noncommercial, intrastate possession of an item might substantially affect interstate commerce is related to use. Possession might be prohibited as an anticipatory means of prohibiting use of a thing in a way that affects interstate commerce. 35 Actually, any use of anything might have an effect on interstate commerce, in the same sense in which a butterfly flapping its wings in China might bring about a change of weather in New York. Thomas Jefferson warned against an overly expansive notion of cause and effect in interpreting the combination of Congress's enumerated powers and the Necessary and Proper Clause: 36 Congress are authorized to defend the nation. Ships are necessary for defense; copper is necessary for ships; mines necessary for copper; a company necessary to work mines; and who can doubt this reasoning who has ever played at This is the House that Jack Built? 37 Letter from Thomas Jefferson to Edward Livingston (Apr. 30, 1800), in 10 The Writings of Thomas Jefferson 165 (Albert Ellery Bergh ed., 1903). See also United States v. A.L.A. Schechter Poultry Corp., 76 F.2d 617, 624 (2d Cir.1935) (L.Hand, J., concurring) (In an industrial society bound together by means of transport and communication as rapid and certain as ours, it is idle to seek for any transaction, however apparently isolated, which may not have an effect elsewhere; such a society is an elastic medium which transmits all tremors throughout its territory; the only question is of their size.), aff'd in part and rev'd in part, 295 U.S. 495, 55 S.Ct. 837, 79 L.Ed. 1570 (1935). If any activity with any effect on interstate commerce, however attenuated, were within congressional regulatory authority, the Constitution's enumeration of powers would have been in vain. 38 That is why the Supreme Court has insisted that, to justify congressional exertion of the commerce power within the third category, the effects must be both significant and not attenuated. See, e.g., Morrison, 529 U.S. at 612-15, 120 S.Ct. 1740. The clearest examples are the Court's decisions in Lopez and Morrison, which were reaffirmed in Raich. Dissenters in those cases offered powerful arguments that the regulated activities— possession of firearms near schools and gender-motivated violence — could and did have significant effects on economic activity. In both cases the majority rejected those arguments, largely on the ground that, if accepted, similar effects could be invoked in every case, and the Commerce Clause would become, in effect, a grant of general governing authority. See Lopez, 514 U.S. at 564, 115 S.Ct. 1624 (disfavoring the government's expansive understanding of the Commerce Clause because it would leave the Court hard pressed to posit any activity by an individual that Congress [would be] without power to regulate); Morrison, 529 U.S. at 615, 120 S.Ct. 1740 (If accepted, petitioners' reasoning would allow Congress to regulate any crime as long as the nationwide, aggregated impact of that crime has substantial effects on employment, production, transit, or consumption.). 39 No one would question that the possession of body armor by felons contributes to crime, or that crime has a measurable and significant impact on the national economy. But that was the argument rejected in Lopez and Morrison. Possession of firearms in the vicinity of schools can contribute to crime, and gender-motivated violence is crime. This Court, being bound by the precedents of Lopez and Morrison, therefore cannot hold that simply because body armor facilitates crime, the subject falls within Congress's commerce power. 40 Indeed, application of section 931 in this case has an even more attenuated relation to interstate commerce than the possession of firearms in Lopez — let alone the actual commission of violent offenses in Morrison. Unlike carrying a firearm in the vicinity of a school, wearing body armor is not an inherently threatening act. Much of the time, wearing body armor is an act of self-defense, which reduces rather than increases crime. This case illustrates the point: Mr. Patton was not armed at the time he was apprehended and — according to his story — was wearing the vest solely because his prior gang activity, now abandoned, made him vulnerable to attack. If the statute were limited to possession of body armor in conjunction with an offensive weapon, or to the use of body armor in the commission of a crime affecting interstate commerce, which were the scenarios motivating its enactment, 6 the connection would be less attenuated. As it is, however, application of section 931 to the circumstances of this case cannot be reconciled with Lopez and Morrison. 41 Moreover, the dissenters' arguments in Lopez and Morrison regarding the substantial effect of the regulated conduct on interstate commerce largely rested on the frequent incidence, and therefore significant aggregated effect, of the conduct. See e.g., Lopez, 514 U.S. at 616, 619-27, 115 S.Ct. 1624 (Breyer, J., dissenting); Morrison, 529 U.S. at 659-60, 120 S.Ct. 1740 (Breyer, J., dissenting). The theory was that widespread conduct, occurring nationwide, has national consequences and warrants a national response. The House Report on section 931, by contrast, contained a Congressional Budget Office estimate, based on information from the U.S. Sentencing Commission, that the prohibition on possession of body armor by felons would probably affect fewer than 10 cases each year. H.R.Rep. No. 107-193, pt. 1, at 7 (2001). Ten criminal cases a year is at the other end of the spectrum from Lopez and Morrison. The CBO estimate shows that the effect on interstate commerce of felons' possession of body armor is probably negligible and certainly far from substantial.
42 Analysis of the effect of felons' possession of body armor is facilitated by Congress's specific findings regarding the effects of the prohibited activity on interstate commerce. Grimmett, 439 F.3d at 1272. We treat Congress's findings on essentially factual issues with a great deal of deference, Walters v. Nat'l Ass'n of Radiation Survivors, 473 U.S. 305, 330 n. 12, 105 S.Ct. 3180, 87 L.Ed.2d 220 (1985), and [p]roper respect for a co-ordinate branch requires that we also treat Congress's normative conclusions and constitutional judgments with great respect. See United States v. Harris, 106 U.S. (16 Otto) 629, 635, 1 S.Ct. 601, 27 L.Ed. 290 (1883). 43 Although there were no preambulatory findings enacted as part of the statute, the House Report contained the following formal findings regarding the rationale for section 931: 44 (1) nationally, police officers and ordinary citizens are facing increased danger as criminals use more deadly weaponry, body armor, and other sophisticated assault gear; 45 (2) crime at the local level is exacerbated by the interstate movement of body armor and other assault gear; 46 (3) there is a traffic in body armor moving in or otherwise affecting interstate commerce, and existing Federal controls over such traffic do not adequately enable the States to control this traffic within their own borders through the exercise of their police power; 47 (4) recent incidents, such as the murder of San Francisco Police Officer James Guelff by an assailant wearing 2 layers of body armor, a 1997 bank shoot out in north Hollywood, California, between police and 2 heavily armed suspects outfitted in body armor, and the 1997 murder of Captain Chris McCurley of the Etowah County, Alabama Drug Task Force by a drug dealer shielded by protective body armor, demonstrate the serious threat to community safety posed by criminals who wear body armor during the commission of a violent crime.... 48 H.R. Rep. 107-193, pt. 1, at 2. 49 Several of these findings make no mention of interstate commerce. Those that do focus on three points: (1) an interstate market for body armor exists, (2) the interstate movement of body armor increases crime, and (3) federal controls over the interstate market will allow states to control the intrastate trade in body armor. The first two points are surely true, but they were also true in Lopez. An interstate market exists for guns and for body armor, and the interstate movement of both can increase crime. Yet in Lopez the existence of the market and the incidence of crime did not establish that the prohibited possessions substantially affected interstate commerce. See Lopez, 514 U.S. at 563-64, 115 S.Ct. 1624 (rejecting the argument that firearm possession substantially affects interstate commerce because it can result in violent crime, which in turn affects insurance and education and thus the national economy). 50 The congressional findings regarding the existence of an interstate market for body armor would be more meaningful if the statute attempted to suppress or limit that market. As discussed above, however, it does not. Manufacture, distribution, and sale of body armor — even sale of body armor to felons — is entirely lawful, and has not been regulated by Congress. Congressional findings that crime at the local level is exacerbated by the interstate movement of body armor and other assault gear and that there is a traffic in body armor moving in or otherwise affecting interstate commerce, H.R.Rep. No. 107-193, pt. 1, at 2, while undoubtedly true, do nothing to explain or justify a statute that does not limit the interstate movement of body armor or the traffic in it. 51 The third point suggests that federal regulation of the interstate traffic in body armor would somehow enable the states themselves to prohibit felons' possession. But thirty-one states already regulate the possession or use of body armor, with an array of legislative approaches. 7 It is thus clear that the federal prohibition does not enable state prohibitions. At best, the federal law duplicates the state prohibitions. At worst, it may conflict with a state's policy judgment, see Jones v. United States, 529 U.S. 848, 859, 120 S.Ct. 1904, 146 L.Ed.2d 902 (2000) (Stevens, J., concurring) (noting that the severe penalties of the federal criminal arson statute could effectively displace a policy choice made by the State); discourage experimentation, see Lopez, 514 U.S. at 583, 115 S.Ct. 1624 (Kennedy, J., concurring) (suggesting that the Gun-Free School Zones Act foreclose[d] the States from experimenting and exercising their own judgment in an area to which States lay claim by right of history and expertise); or even preempt state criminal laws, see Pennsylvania v. Nelson, 350 U.S. 497, 504, 76 S.Ct. 477, 100 L.Ed. 640 (1956) (holding that a federal sedition statute preempted the Pennsylvania Sedition Act); see also Michael A. Simons, Prosecutorial Discretion and Prosecution Guidelines: A Case Study in Controlling Federalization, 75 N.Y.U. L.Rev. 893, 962 n. 309 (2000) (noting the de facto preemption of state and local prosecutions in the context of crimes implicating federal interests). 52 Moreover, the findings indicate that this statute falls primarily within an area of traditional regulation by the states, namely protecting police officers and ordinary citizens from violent crime. See Lopez, 514 U.S. at 561 n. 3, 115 S.Ct. 1624 (noting the primary authority of the states for creating the criminal law (internal quotation marks omitted)); Morrison, 529 U.S. at 615-17, 120 S.Ct. 1740 (noting areas of traditional state concern and reject[ing] the argument that Congress may regulate noneconomic, violent criminal conduct based solely on that conduct's aggregate effect on interstate commerce). Congress was understandably concerned about the serious threat to community safety posed by criminals who wear body armor during the commission of a violent crime. H.R.Rep. No. 107-193, pt. 1, at 2. Yet in this area the Supreme Court has emphasized the prerogatives of the states. See, e.g., Morrison, 529 U.S. at 618, 120 S.Ct. 1740 (The regulation and punishment of intrastate violence that is not directed at the instrumentalities, channels, or goods involved in interstate commerce has always been the province of the States.); Cohens v. Virginia, 19 U.S. (6 Wheat.) 264, 426, 5 L.Ed. 257 (1821) (Marshall, C.J.) (concluding that Congress has no general right to punish murder committed within any of the States). 8 Moreover, as noted above, this statute not only intrudes on an area of traditional state concern but also potentially conflicts with the widespread state regulation that already exists. Cf. Lopez, 514 U.S. at 561 n. 3, 115 S.Ct. 1624 (When Congress criminalizes conduct already denounced as criminal by the States, it effects a change in the sensitive relation between federal and state criminal jurisdiction. (internal quotation marks omitted)). Far from establishing a substantial effect on interstate commerce, these findings raise concerns about federal intrusion and suggest that wearing body armor affects interstate commerce insofar as all crime hurts the economy — an argument the Supreme Court rejected in Lopez and Morrison.
53 Finally, we consider whether the statute's reach was limited by an express jurisdictional element. Jeronimo-Bautista, 425 F.3d at 1269. As the Court explained in Morrison, a jurisdictional hook restricting the statute to activities that `have an explicit connection with or effect on interstate commerce' .... may establish that the enactment is in pursuance of Congress' regulation of interstate commerce. 529 U.S. at 612, 120 S.Ct. 1740 (quoting Lopez, 514 U.S. at 562, 115 S.Ct. 1624). A jurisdictional hook is not, however, a talisman that wards off constitutional challenges. See United States v. Rodia, 194 F.3d 465, 472-73 (3d Cir.1999) (rejecting a hard and fast rule that the presence of a jurisdictional element automatically ensures the constitutionality of a statute); United States v. Holston, 343 F.3d 83, 88 (2d Cir.2003) (finding the jurisdictional hook factor superficially met but not relying on the mere existence of jurisdictional language purporting to tie criminal conduct to interstate commerce). As the Eleventh Circuit has recently noted, where a jurisdictional element is required, a meaningful one, rather than a pretextual incantation evoking the phantasm of commerce, must be offered. Maxwell, 446 F.3d at 1217 (internal quotation marks, citations, and alteration omitted). The ultimate inquiry is whether the prohibited activity has a substantial effect on interstate commerce, and the presence of a jurisdictional hook, though certainly helpful, is neither necessary nor sufficient. 54 The principal practical consequence of a jurisdictional hook is to make a facial constitutional challenge unlikely or impossible, and to direct litigation toward the statutory question of whether, in the particular case, the regulated conduct possesses the requisite connection to interstate commerce. See Jones, 529 U.S. at 857, 120 S.Ct. 1904. In Jones, the Supreme Court unanimously held that an alleged violation of the federal arson statute fell outside the statute's jurisdictional hook, which limited application to `property used in interstate or foreign commerce or in any activity affecting interstate or foreign commerce.' Id. at 850-51, 120 S.Ct. 1904 (quoting 18 U.S.C. § 844(i)). The government argued that the jurisdictional hook was satisfied because the burned home was used in three activities affecting interstate commerce: securing a mortgage from an out-of-state lender, obtaining a casualty insurance policy from an out-of-state insurer, and receiving natural gas from out-of-state sources. Id. at 855, 120 S.Ct. 1904. The Court rejected this expansive interpretation in part because [p]ractically every building in our cities, towns, and rural areas is constructed with supplies that have moved in interstate commerce, served by utilities that have an interstate connection, financed or insured by enterprises that do business across state lines, or bears some other trace of interstate commerce. Id. at 857, 120 S.Ct. 1904. In Jones, therefore, the jurisdictional hook served the purpose of limiting the statute to arson cases where there really was a substantial and non-attenuated effect on interstate commerce. 55 The statute under which Mr. Patton was charged also has a jurisdictional hook, but it does not seriously limit the reach of the statute. The jurisdictional hook, § 921(a)(35), limits the definition of body armor to any product sold or offered for sale, in interstate or foreign commerce, as personal protective body covering intended to protect against gunfire. Nearly all body armor will meet that test. More important, there is no reason to think that possession of body armor that satisfies the jurisdictional hook has any greater effect on interstate commerce than possession of any other body armor. 56 If Congress intended to suppress the interstate market in body armor, then directing a prohibition on possession towards armor that had moved in interstate commerce would make sense. Cf. Wickard, 317 U.S. at 128, 63 S.Ct. 82 (One of the primary purposes of the Act in question was to increase the market price of wheat and to that end to limit the volume thereof that could affect the market.). Where Congress has chosen to allow production, distribution, and sale of body armor in interstate commerce, however, it is hard to understand why possession of armor that meets that description is more objectionable than any other. See Holston, 343 F.3d at 89 (questioning the effectiveness of a jurisdictional hook when the interstate component underpinning the jurisdictional element, for example, the shipment of a video camera, is attenuated from the criminal conduct — the production of child pornography — which occurs entirely locally). 57 A jurisdictional hook that restricts a statute to items that bear a trace of interstate commerce is no restriction at all. Jones, 529 U.S. at 857, 120 S.Ct. 1904. To apply the body armor statute to every case where body armor was once sold across state lines would therefore replicate the government's error in Jones. If the jurisdictional hook had limited application of the statute to cases where the felon used body armor during commission of a crime that affected interstate commerce, we would know exactly what Congress's theory of its authority is. We would then be able to evaluate whether, on the facts of the case, the substantial and non-attenuated connection to interstate commerce that Congress expected was present. As it is, however, section 931's requirement that the body armor must once have traveled in interstate commerce is so sweeping as to be unhelpful in determining whether the activities regulated by the statute have a substantial and non-attenuated effect on interstate commerce. 58 Given that Mr. Patton's possession was not interstate, not commercial, and not an essential part of a comprehensive scheme of economic regulation, that his use of the bulletproof vest was in self-defense and not connected to crimes that might affect interstate commerce, and in light of the CBO's prediction that the statute would be applied fewer than ten times a year, we find no rational basis for concluding that the possession of body armor prohibited by section 931 substantially affects interstate commerce. We thus conclude that 18 U.S.C. § 931 cannot be justified as a regulation of the channels of commerce, as a protection of the instrumentalities of commerce, or as a regulation of intrastate activity that substantially affects interstate commerce.