Opinion ID: 719755
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Majority's Mis reading Of Lopez

Text: 69 I am aware of no judicial opinion or academic commentary that has suggested precisely the reading of Lopez I have just set forth. To be sure, the caselaw and academic commentary that Lopez has spawned more closely follows the approach of today's majority than it does mine. See, e.g., Turner, 77 F.3d at 889 (collecting authorities); United States v. McAllister, 77 F.3d 387 (11th Cir.1996); United States v. Bell, 70 F.3d 495, 498 (7th Cir.1995); Merritt, supra; Pollack, supra. 70 In a sense, I can understand why the majority has reached the result it has. For the better part of this century, the Supreme Court has found no meaningful limits to Congress's power to regulate interstate commerce under the federal Constitution. I suspect that the majority is reluctant, therefore, to find that Lopez is more than an aberration or a small pause in the High Court's previously longstanding and steady trend toward turning Congress's enumerated power to regulate interstate commerce into a generalized police power. But there is still a difference between reading a case narrowly and reading a case so narrowly that it is reduced to a hollow shell. 71 The majority's conclusion relies largely on two sentences drawn from a single paragraph in the Supreme Court's Lopez opinion. 8 See Compassion in Dying v. Washington, 49 F.3d 586, 590 (9th Cir.1995) (It is commonly accounted an error to lift sentences or even paragraphs out of one context and insert the abstracted thought into a wholly different context.), rev'd, 79 F.3d 790 (9th Cir.1996) (en banc ). The majority converts these two sentences into the core of a constitutional standard for measuring whether a federal criminal statute comports with the Commerce Clause, and in the process, ignores the larger principles announced by Lopez. 72 The majority opinion holds that the jurisdictional nexus contained in § 922(g)(1) converts that statute into one that regulates a commercial activity. Majority opinion at 570. In what I suppose is merely dicta, the majority goes on to find that the regulation of firearm possessions by convicted felons is an essential part of a larger regulation of economic activity, in which the regulatory scheme could be undercut unless the intrastate activity were regulated. Majority opinion at 570 (citing Lopez, --- U.S. at ----, 115 S.Ct. at 1631). I deal with each of these holdings in turn. 73 A statute that regulates non-commercial activity cannot be converted into a statute that regulates commercial activity by dint of clever legislative craftwork. But in holding that the inclusion of a jurisdictional element in § 922(g)(1) transforms that statute into a regulation of commercial activity, 9 majority opinion at 570, the majority reduces the Lopez analysis to a single question: Does a challenged statute contain a jurisdictional element? When the answer to this question is yes, according to the majority, both Lopez 's regulation of commercial activities test and its jurisdictional element test are satisfied. Id. at 569-70. 74 Thus, the majority opinion embraces the theory that if the words in or affecting commerce appear in a federal statute, the required relationship with interstate commerce is established. Lopez did not leave the doors open to such a theory. Nor did it permit Congress magically to produce a commercial activity (possession of a firearm in or affecting commerce) out of a non-commercial one (possession of a firearm) by conferring a jurisdictional credential on the non-commercial activity. 75 In dicta, the majority rules that § 922(g)(1) is an essential part of a larger regulation of economic activity, in which the regulatory scheme could be undercut unless the intrastate activity were regulated. Majority opinion at 570 (citing Lopez, --- U.S. at ----, 115 S.Ct. at 1631). While the majority invokes the language of Lopez to the effect that a regulation of non-commercial activity may be sustained as a valid exercise of Congress's commerce power if it is an essential part of a larger regulation of economic activity, Lopez, --- U.S. at ----, 115 S.Ct. at 1631, the most that the majority opinion has established is that § 922(g)(1) is a part--albeit not an essential part--of a larger regulation of economic activity, see majority opinion at 570, 571-72, or that it facilitates such regulation. See id. at 572. The majority does not explain why or how the elimination of the possessory offense from § 922(g) would undercut the purposes of that statute's larger regulatory scheme. Saying it does does not make it so. 76 Additionally, the majority opinion only briefly mentions that Lopez involved an inquiry into whether § 922(q) constituted a regulation of an intrastate activity which arose out of, or was connected with, a commercial transaction, id. at 569-70, 571-72, holding, in essence, that this inquiry is satisfied here by § 922(g)(1)'s jurisdictional element. The majority opinion does not address Congress's findings on the question whether possession of firearms by convicted felons has (or had) a substantial effect on interstate commerce, 10 or its findings on the question whether the numerous state laws prohibiting possession of handguns by convicted felons are (or were) inadequate to the task of such regulation. See Lopez, --- U.S. at ---- & n. 3, 115 S.Ct. at 1631 & n. 3; see also Donald Regan, How to Think About the Federal Commerce Power and Incidentally Rewrite United States v. Lopez, 94 MICH. L. REV . 554, 555 (1995) (arguing that federal power under the Commerce Clause exists where and only where there is a special justification for it, and suggesting that the relevant question in measuring a federal law or program under the Commerce Clause is: Is there some reason the federal government must be able to do this, some reason why we cannot leave the matter to the states?). Consideration of these points and the principles on which they rest is necessary for the majority's own analysis. By reading Lopez as simply reaffirming the Court's previous, expansive Commerce Clause jurisprudence, the majority effectively holds that Lopez has done nothing to rein in Congress's interstate commerce power, save perhaps to establish some sort of empty, formalistic requirements with which Congress must comply in order to legislate under that power. 11 I, for one, am unprepared to reduce the Supreme Court's Lopez decision to an anachronism to be noted in passing but ignored. Congress's enumerated powers, like Supreme Court opinions setting forth their limits, are, in my view, to be taken seriously, see Seminole Tribe of Florida v. Florida, --- U.S. ----, 116 S.Ct. 1114, 134 L.Ed.2d 252 (1996), and taking these matters seriously requires that we rule § 922(g)(1) unconstitutional.II. 77 Even if I were inclined to agree in principle with the main thrust of the majority's reading of Lopez, I could not agree with the manner in which the majority reasons that the Supreme Court has already effectively passed on the constitutionality of § 922(g)(1) under Congress's commerce power. To explain why this is so, I set forth, at length, what I find, methodologically, the most troubling portion of the majority's opinion: 78 The Supreme Court has held that proof that a firearm moved in interstate commerce at any time is sufficient to meet the government's burden of proving the in commerce or affecting commerce element of § 1202(a), the predecessor to § 922(g). Scarborough v. United States, 431 U.S. 563, 566-67, 97 S.Ct. 1963, 1964-65, 52 L.Ed.2d 582 (1977). Although Scarborough was decided as a matter of statutory construction, the Court noted that Congress knew how to assert  'its full Commerce Clause power so as to cover all activity substantially affecting interstate commerce,'  and that Congress intended to exercise the full extent of its Commerce Clause power when enacting § 1202(a). Id. at 571-72, 97 S.Ct. at 1967-68 (quoting United States v. American Bldg. Maintenance Industries, 422 U.S. 271, 280, 95 S.Ct. 2150, 2156, 45 L.Ed.2d 177 (1975)). The Court did not reach the issue of whether § 1202(a), as construed to reach possession of firearms that had moved at any time in interstate commerce, was within Congress's Commerce Clause power; however, the Court affirmed the conviction in Scarborough. The Court's silence on the constitutionality of the statute, coupled with the Court's language about Congress's intent to exercise its full Commerce Clause authority, indicates that the Court believed that § 1202(a) as construed, and thus § 922(g), clearly was within Congress's power. The conclusion that § 922(g) is constitutional is buttressed by the Supreme Court's decision in Bass, in which the Court construed § 1202(a) as requiring a nexus to commerce in part to avoid the constitutional question of whether punishment for mere possession of firearmsby felons, without the commerce nexus, would be constitutionally permissible. Bass, 404 U.S. at 339 n. 4, 92 S.Ct. at 518 n. 4. The fact that the Court twice construed a statute to require only a minimum nexus with commerce, but did not discuss whether the statute as construed was constitutional, indicates that the Court clearly believed that the statute as construed was constitutional. It would be illogical indeed to infer a contrary result, particularly when the Bass Court construed the statute to avoid a constitutional question. When the Court construes a statute to avoid a constitutional question, the Court's construction must itself be constitutional. 79 Majority opinion at 570-71 (other citations omitted). 80 I know of no basis in our jurisprudence permitting us to rely upon the Supreme Court's silence on a matter of constitutional significance as any indication, much less a clear indication, that the Court has, in effect, already passed upon a constitutional question. I have always understood the constitutional limitations imposed upon the judiciary by Article III of the federal Constitution to preclude us from rendering advisory opinions of the sort the majority attributes to the Supreme Court. 81 Conceding that the Commerce Clause pedigree of § 1202(a) may be relevant to the interpretation of § 922(g)(1), I simply cannot agree that the Court has ever even purported to rule on the constitutionality of § 1202(a)--much less the constitutionality of § 922(g)(1). Indeed, in Bass, a case on which the majority opinion heavily relies for its conclusion, the Supreme Court expressly reserved the question--a point which did not escape the Lopez Court. Lopez, --- U.S. at ----, 115 S.Ct. at 1631 (citing Bass, 404 U.S. at 339 n. 4, 92 S.Ct. at 518 n. 4; United States v. Five Gambling Devices, 346 U.S. 441, 448, 74 S.Ct. 190, 194, 98 L.Ed. 179 (1953) (The principle is old and deeply imbedded in our jurisprudence that this Court will construe a statute in a manner that requires decision of serious constitutional questions only if the statutory language leaves no reasonable alternative)). I am at a loss to understand how the majority opinion can rely upon the Court's silence about the constitutionality of § 1202(a) to hold that it would be illogical indeed to think that § 922(g)(1) is not a valid exercise of Congress's commerce power. See United States v. Mitchell, 271 U.S. 9, 14, 46 S.Ct. 418, 419-20, 70 L.Ed. 799 (1926) (It is not to be thought that a question not raised by counsel or discussed in the opinion of the court has been decided merely because it existed in the record and might have been raised and considered.) 82 But for the fact that I am compelled to follow the established law of this Circuit, as handed down in Turner, supra, I would not concur in the majority's conclusion that § 922(g)(1) is a valid exercise of Congress's Commerce Clause authority. I, therefore, concur only in the result that § 922(g)(1) must be upheld and that Chesney's conviction must be sustained.