Opinion ID: 78775
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Raich/Maxwell

Text: In Gonzales v. Raich, 545 U.S. 1, 125 S.Ct. 2195, 162 L.Ed.2d 1 (2005), the Supreme Court addressed a constitutional challenge to the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), to the extent that the Act was enforced against individuals in California who possessed and cultivated marijuana for medicinal purposes. Id. at 5-7, 125 S.Ct. at 2198-2200. The Supreme Court clarified that Raich did not contend that any provision or section of the CSA amounts to an unconstitutional exercise of congressional authority, but instead, challenged the CSA's application to the intrastate manufacture and possession of marijuana for medicinal purposes. Id. at 15, 125 S.Ct. at 2204-05. The Court determined that its case law established that Congress can regulate purely intrastate activity that is not itself `commercial,' in that it is not produced for sale, if it concludes that failure to regulate that class of activity would undercut the regulation of the interstate market in that commodity. Id. at 18, 125 S.Ct. at 2206. The Court noted that congressional findings set forth in the CSA were helpful in reviewing the substance of a congressional statutory scheme. Id. at 21, 125 S.Ct. at 2208. The Court also specifically addressed Raich's arguments based on Lopez and Morrison, stating: Here, respondents ask us to excise individual applications of a concededly valid statutory scheme. In contrast, in both Lopez and Morrison, the parties asserted that a particular statute or provision fell outside Congress' commerce power in its entirety. This distinction is pivotal for we have often reiterated that where the class of activities is regulated and that class is within the reach of federal power, the courts have no power to excise, as trivial, individual instances of the class. Id. at 23, 125 S.Ct. at 2209 (quotations omitted). The Court noted that the statute at issue in Lopez did not regulate economic activity and did not require, as an element of the offense, that possession of a gun have any connection to interstate economic activity. Id. at 23, 125 S.Ct. at 2209. The Court determined that, in contrast, the CSA was quintessentially economic, because it regulated production, distribution, and consumption of commodities for which there was an established interstate market, and [p]rohibiting the intrastate possession or manufacture of an article of commerce is a rational . . . means of regulating commerce in that product. Id. at 26, 125 S.Ct. at 2211. In United States v. Maxwell, 446 F.3d 1210 (11th Cir.2006), we reviewed, on remand from the Supreme Court, our prior decision that 18 U.S.C. § 2252A, a provision of the CPPA, was unconstitutional as applied to a defendant's intrastate possession of child pornography that was created using materials that had traveled in interstate commerce. Id. at 1211. It should be noted that both § 2252A and § 2252(b) contain essentially the same jurisdictional hook, requiring that the child pornography be produced using materials that have been mailed, or shipped or transported in interstate . . . commerce. See id. at 1212, citing 18 U.S.C. § 2252A(a)(5)(B); 18 U.S.C. § 2251(b). In Maxwell, we pointed out that, in our previous opinion, we had analyzed § 2252A in light of the four Morrison factors. Maxwell, 446 F.3d at 1212-13. However, in a footnote, we noted the potential confusion that may arise from the now unclear status of the four Morrison/Lopez factors post- Raich. . . . [T]he majority's analysis [in Raich ] neither systematically scrutinized the four factors nor explained why it did not do so. We decline to adopt a general theory for when those factors apply and when they do not. It is sufficient for present purposes to note we are not here dealing with a single-subject statute whose single subject is itself non-economic (e.g., possession of a gun in a school zone or gender-motivated violence). Rather here, as in Raich, appellant challenges a component of a broader regulatory scheme whose subject is decidedly economic. As such, Raich guides our analysis. Id. at 1216 n. 6. With Raich guiding our analysis, we determined that § 2252A, possession of child pornography, was similar to the drug statute at issue in Raich, in that it was part of a comprehensive regulatory scheme criminalizing the receipt, distribution, sale, production, possession, solicitation and advertisement of a commodity for which there was an interstate market; thus, the analysis set forth in Raich applied, so that the relevant inquiry was whether Congress could rationally conclude that the cumulative effect of the conduct by Maxwell and his ilk would substantially affect interstate commerce. Id. at 1216-18; see also United States v. Smith, 459 F.3d 1276, 1285 (11th Cir.2006) (applying Raich and Maxwell analysis in holding that § 2251(a), production of child pornography, was not unconstitutional as applied to Smith's intrastate production of child pornography, because Congress could have rationally concluded that the inability to regulate intrastate possession and production of child pornography would, in the aggregate, undermine Congress's regulation of the interstate child pornography market). Ultimately, we determined that § 2252A was constitutional, because there is nothing irrational about Congress's conclusion, supported by its findings, that pornography begets pornography, regardless of its origin. Nor is it irrational for Congress to conclude that its inability to regulate the intrastate incidence of child pornography would undermine its broader regulatory scheme designed to eliminate the market in its entirety, or that the enforcement difficulties that attend distinguishing between [purely intrastate and interstate child pornography] . . . would frustrate Congress's interest in completely eliminating the interstate market. Maxwell, 446 F.3d at 1218.