Opinion ID: 12932
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: Constitutionality of the Hobbs Act Under Lopez Part III

Text: 84 With respect to Lopez Part III, the Supreme Court recognized in Lopez that its case law had not always been clear as to whether an activity must merely affect or substantially affect interstate commerce to be within Congress's regulatory power. Lopez, 514 U.S. at 559, 115 S.Ct. at 1630. However, the Court clearly concluded that consistent with the great weight of our case law ... the proper test requires an analysis of whether the regulated activity 'substantially affects' interstate commerce. Id. In reviewing the history of its own decisions relating to the exercise by Congress of its Commerce Clause power, the Court in Lopez stressed that it has never declared that 'Congress may use a relatively trivial impact on commerce as an excuse for broad general regulation of state or private activities.'  Id. (quoting Wirtz, 392 U.S. at 196 n. 27, 88 S.Ct. 2017, 2024 n. 27). 85 Prior to the decision in Robinson, our Circuit tested two other criminal statutes against Lopez 's requirement of a substantial effect on interstate commerce. In United States v. Kirk, 105 F.3d 997 (5th Cir.1997) (en banc), petition for cert. filed, 65 U.S.L.W. 3756 (U.S. May 5, 1997) (No. 96-1759), an equally divided en banc court affirmed a conviction for intrastate possession of a machine gun, 18 U.S.C. § 992(o). Three opinions were filed by various judges of this Court, two opinions (endorsed by a combination of eight judges) upholding the constitutionality of § 922(o), and one opinion (endorsed by eight other judges) holding that § 922(o) did not satisfy the test of Lopez Part III. It is important to note, however, that each and every opinion in Kirk recognized that Lopez required the use of the adverb substantially in testing whether an effect on commerce passed constitutional muster. See Kirk, 105 F.3d at 998 (opinion of Parker, J.), 999-1000 (opinion of Higginbotham, J.), 1008 (opinion of Jones, J.). 86 Subsequently, in United States v. Corona, 108 F.3d 565 (5th Cir.1997), we upheld the constitutionality of a federal criminal statute involving purely intrastate activity under the third Lopez category by reading into the statute a requirement that the intrastate activity involved must substantially affect interstate commerce. The Corona decision affirmed an arson conviction involving the burning of a building rented by a taxi company. In addition to its customary purely local trips, the taxi company offered transportation to interstate travelers arriving at an airport. We reasoned that Congress could criminalize the specific activity involved, i.e., the burning of a taxi company warehouse, because destruction of such a building could have a substantial effect upon interstate commerce. Corona, 108 F.3d at 571. 87 We also concluded that under Lopez, Congress cannot constitutionally make all arsons federal crimes; only those arsons which substantially affect interstate commerce are subject to federal regulation. The prosecution of other arsons is solely a state concern. Thus an element of the crime of federal arson is that the defendant's actions had a substantial effect upon interstate commerce. This of course requires a case-by-case analysis. We analyzed the evidence in Corona and concluded that the burning of a taxi-cab warehouse had such an effect and was therefore a federal crime. 18 U.S.C. § 844(i). 88 Corona is important to our consideration of the Hobbs Act because, like the Hobbs Act, the arson statute does not expressly require that the activity regulated must have a substantial effect upon interstate commerce. 2 Lopez imposes the same requirement for a constitutional prosecution of robbery under the Hobbs Act: the robbery must have a substantial effect upon interstate commerce to constitute a federal crime. 89 I would apply the same reasoning in testing the facial constitutionality of the Hobbs Act under the third category of Lopez. I would hold that the Hobbs Act is constitutional as applied to a robbery or a robbery conspiracy only if the robbery substantially affects interstate commerce. To the extent that the Hobbs Act is read to make it a federal crime to commit a robbery which affects interstate commerce in any [insubstantial or de minimis ] way or degree, it is unconstitutional under Lopez. 90 I recognize that my conclusion conflicts with our Circuit's decision in Robinson and with the decisions of other circuits which have also rejected the substantial effect test with respect to the Hobbs Act. 3 Respectfully, I think that our application of the substantial effect test to the arson statute in Corona and to § 922(o) in Kirk mandates our application of the substantial effect test to the Hobbs Act. The decision in Robinson is in conflict with our prior holdings.