Opinion ID: 167660
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Is the regulated activity commercial?

Text: 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.