Opinion ID: 2378841
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: commerce clause violation

Text: The final issue raised by the plaintiffs is that the statute, which creates thirty-one separate community standards, violates Article I, § 8 of the United States Constitution by requiring businesses to tailor distribution of books in Tennessee to meet the differing standards, thereby imposing an enormous burden on interstate commerce. Article I, Section 8 of the United States Constitution grants to Congress the power to regulate commerce among the several states. The Supreme Court has interpreted the Commerce Clause as a limitation on the power of state governments. However, states are not precluded from enacting legislation which has an impact on interstate commerce if the state law regulates even-handedly to effectuate a legitimate local public interest and its effects on interstate commerce are only incidental, and the burden imposed on interstate commerce is not clearly excessive in relation to the local benefits. Pike v. Bruce Church, Inc., 397 U.S. 137, 142, 90 S.Ct. 844, 847, 25 L.Ed.2d 174 (1970). Applying those standards to this case, the plaintiffs' Commerce Clause challenge is without merit, both factually and legally. As a factual matter, the record demonstrates that the book distributors and publishers do not consider differing community standards in the operation of their businesses. From a legal standpoint, the U.S. Supreme Court has declined to require a national community and allowed states wide latitude in defining the term community. See Miller, 413 U.S. at 31-34, 93 S.Ct. at 2618-20. For example, in Smith v. United States, 431 U.S. 291, 97 S.Ct. 1756, 52 L.Ed.2d 324 (1977), the Court indicated that states may define the term community as the area from which the jury pool was selected, implicitly approving of geographical definitions. Id., 431 U.S. at 303, 97 S.Ct. at 1765. Later, the Court observed that regulations which restrict access by minors to material obscene as to minors must also be classified as having only an incidental effect on commerce. Exxon Corp. v. Governor of Maryland, 437 U.S. 117, 127, 98 S.Ct. 2207, 2215, 57 L.Ed.2d 91 (1978). Moreover, the three cases cited by the plaintiffs in support of the Commerce Clause challenge are inapposite. In all of those cases the Court found that there was a discriminatory purpose behind the challenged law, or that the purported local benefits of the statute were illusory. Kassel v. Consolidated Freightways Corp., 450 U.S. 662, 101 S.Ct. 1309, 67 L.Ed.2d 580 (1981); Raymond Motor Transp., Inc. v. Rice, 434 U.S. 429, 98 S.Ct. 787, 54 L.Ed.2d 664 (1978); Hunt v. Washington State Apple Advertising Comm'n, 432 U.S. 333, 97 S.Ct. 2434, 53 L.Ed.2d 383 (1977). Nothing in this record indicates that the obscenity statutes here under attack were motivated by a desire to discriminate against interstate commerce, or that the local benefit of the statutes, the protection of minors, is illusory. Accordingly, the Chancellor's decision overruling the plaintiffs' Commerce Clause challenge is affirmed.