Opinion ID: 167660
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: What is the relation of the regulated activity to interstate commerce?

Text: 23 Where possession of an item is not a commercial activity in itself, it may nonetheless have a substantial and non-attenuated effect on interstate commerce in two ways. First, possession of a good is related to the market for that good, and Congress may regulate possession as a necessary and proper means of controlling its supply or demand. For example, the federal government may elect to prohibit the possession of eagle feathers as a practical means of drying up the market for them, and thus protecting against the killing of eagles. Andrus v. Allard, 444 U.S. 51, 58, 100 S.Ct. 318, 62 L.Ed.2d 210 (1979). Second, possession of a good is related to the use of that good, and its use may have effects on interstate commerce. For example, no one would doubt Congress's authority to prohibit the civilian possession of surface-to-air missile launchers, on the theory that their only possible use would substantially affect interstate commerce. We will examine both possibilities, in light of Supreme Court precedents in analogous cases. 24 a. Regulation of possession as a means of regulating the interstate market for body armor 25 In Raich, 125 S.Ct. at 2211, and earlier in Wickard v. Filburn, 317 U.S. 111, 127-28, 63 S.Ct. 82, 87 L.Ed. 122 (1942), the Supreme Court upheld the authority of Congress to prohibit the domestic consumption of a home-grown commodity, where that prohibition was an indirect and supplemental, but still essential, means of enforcing regulations on the national market in that commodity. In Raich, the Court concluded that noncommercial possession of home-grown marijuana for personal medical use, as authorized by state law, could rationally be considered an inseparable part of the broader, and undeniably commercial, national market for marijuana. 125 S.Ct. at 2211. Under the Controlled Substances Act, the manufacture, distribution, possession, and use of marijuana are illegal. Id. Because of the difficulty of distinguishing home-grown marijuana consumed for medical reasons from other marijuana, and the constant possibility of its diversion into illicit channels, the Court concluded that Congress could rationally believe that medical marijuana, if exempted from the Act, would significantly increase the supply of marijuana and that some of this marijuana would move in interstate commerce. Id. at 2213-14. The Court distinguished Lopez and Morrison on the ground that the challenged provisions in those cases were not part of a comprehensive regulation of economic activity. Id. at 2209-11. 26 In the statute at issue in Wickard, Congress enacted a comprehensive program limiting the production of certain agricultural commodities for the purpose of raising their market price. 317 U.S. at 125-27. The Court upheld application of those regulations to wheat produced by a farmer for his own family's domestic and livestock consumption, on the theory that allowing farmers to evade the production restrictions, when consuming wheat for their own use, would undermine the economic objectives of the entire program. Id. at 127-28, 63 S.Ct. 82. 27 In both Raich and Wickard, the regulation of domestic possession and use was justified on the basis of its impact on a comprehensive regulatory scheme directed at interstate production, distribution, and sale. By contrast, in Lopez, where there was no such connection to a comprehensive regulation of the national market, the Court made clear that Congress could not reach mere possession under the Commerce Clause. 514 U.S. at 560, 115 S.Ct. 1624 (Section 922(g) is not an essential part of a larger regulation of economic activity, in which the regulatory scheme would be undercut unless the intrastate activity were regulated.). 28 This Court has used the same rationale to sustain congressional prohibitions on the production and possession of child pornography. In Jeronimo-Bautista and Grimmett, this Court held that Congress has authority under the Commerce Clause to prohibit mere possession of child pornography, on the rationale that prohibiting possession was an essential part of a comprehensive scheme to destroy the market for this pernicious commodity. Grimmett, 439 F.3d at 1272; Jeronimo-Bautista, 425 F.3d at 1271. Thus, although possession of child pornography might in some cases be intrastate and noncommercial, prohibiting it across the board can be an indirect and supplemental, but still essential, means of controlling the interstate commercial market. Accord United States v. Maxwell, 446 F.3d 1210, 1215 (11th Cir. 2006) ([W]here Congress comprehensively regulates economic activity, it may constitutionally regulate intrastate activity, whether economic or not, so long as the inability to do so would undermine Congress's ability to implement effectively the overlying economic regulatory scheme.). 29 Where the statute is not part of a comprehensive scheme of regulation, however, the Court has not upheld federal regulation of purely intrastate noneconomic activity. See Morrison, 529 U.S. at 610, 120 S.Ct. 1740 (indicating that the noneconomic, criminal nature of the conduct at issue in Lopez was central to [the] decision); id. at 613, 115 S.Ct. 1624 (noting that the Supreme Court had upheld Commerce Clause regulation of intrastate activity only where that activity [was] economic in nature); Raich, 125 S.Ct. at 2210 (noting that in Morrison the Court held the statute unconstitutional because, like the statute in Lopez, it did not regulate economic activity); id. at 2211 (upholding a statute that directly regulates economic, commercial activity). 30 We must therefore determine whether the prohibition on possession of body armor by felons is an essential part of comprehensive legislation to regulate the interstate market in a fungible commodity. Raich, 125 S.Ct. at 2209. It is not. In contrast to its comprehensive ban on marijuana under the Controlled Substances Act, Congress has not prohibited the manufacture, distribution, sale, possession, or use of body armor. Members of the U.S. military, federal agents of the CIA and FBI, local police officers, security guards, hunters, convenience store owners — all non-felons — are free to buy, own, and possess body armor. Companies are free to produce and sell it. The prohibition of possession by a small class of persons, felons, is unrelated to any broader attempt to suppress the market (as in Raich, Jeronimo-Bautista, or Grimmett ) or to comprehensively control supply (as in Wickard ). Even with respect to felons, the statute's non-commercial focus is clear from what goes unpunished. No one violates the law by selling to a felon or buying from a felon, and felons themselves may sell body armor previously acquired or use it in the course of their licit occupations. 18 U.S.C. § 931(b)(1). 31 Moreover, in this case, Mr. Patton acquired his bulletproof vest at a time when possession of body armor by felons was lawful. Here, therefore, there is no logical connection — not even an attenuated one — between his possession and the body armor market. Since it was lawful for him to purchase and possess the armor when he bought it, prohibition of continued possession cannot contribute, even indirectly, to regulating the market. Cf. United States v. Marrero, 299 F.3d 653, 655-56 (7th Cir.2002) ([W]e are in a new era and must be wary of such arguments as that the theft of a bottle of aspirin from a person's home `affects' commerce, provided only that the bottle was shipped from another state, because the homeowner would be likely to buy another bottle from his local druggist to replace the one that was stolen and the druggist would replace that sale by purchasing another bottle interstate.). 32 Nor does it matter that body armor is subject to pervasive regulation by the states, as discussed below. Such regulation of a commodity is not enough to establish a comprehensive regulatory scheme, because this was surely present in Lopez and the states and the federal government regulate firearms more extensively than body armor. See Anthony A. Braga et al., The Illegal Supply of Firearms, 29 Crime & Just. 319, 321-24 (2002) (describing the extensive regulation of firearms). Like the statute in Lopez, section 931 regulates possession for its own sake and cannot be justified as part (much less as an essential part) of a comprehensive regulation of the market in body armor. 33 b. Regulation of possession as a means of controlling uses that might affect interstate commerce 34 The second way in which noncommercial, intrastate possession of an item might substantially affect interstate commerce is related to use. Possession might be prohibited as an anticipatory means of prohibiting use of a thing in a way that affects interstate commerce. 35 Actually, any use of anything might have an effect on interstate commerce, in the same sense in which a butterfly flapping its wings in China might bring about a change of weather in New York. Thomas Jefferson warned against an overly expansive notion of cause and effect in interpreting the combination of Congress's enumerated powers and the Necessary and Proper Clause: 36 Congress are authorized to defend the nation. Ships are necessary for defense; copper is necessary for ships; mines necessary for copper; a company necessary to work mines; and who can doubt this reasoning who has ever played at This is the House that Jack Built? 37 Letter from Thomas Jefferson to Edward Livingston (Apr. 30, 1800), in 10 The Writings of Thomas Jefferson 165 (Albert Ellery Bergh ed., 1903). See also United States v. A.L.A. Schechter Poultry Corp., 76 F.2d 617, 624 (2d Cir.1935) (L.Hand, J., concurring) (In an industrial society bound together by means of transport and communication as rapid and certain as ours, it is idle to seek for any transaction, however apparently isolated, which may not have an effect elsewhere; such a society is an elastic medium which transmits all tremors throughout its territory; the only question is of their size.), aff'd in part and rev'd in part, 295 U.S. 495, 55 S.Ct. 837, 79 L.Ed. 1570 (1935). If any activity with any effect on interstate commerce, however attenuated, were within congressional regulatory authority, the Constitution's enumeration of powers would have been in vain. 38 That is why the Supreme Court has insisted that, to justify congressional exertion of the commerce power within the third category, the effects must be both significant and not attenuated. See, e.g., Morrison, 529 U.S. at 612-15, 120 S.Ct. 1740. The clearest examples are the Court's decisions in Lopez and Morrison, which were reaffirmed in Raich. Dissenters in those cases offered powerful arguments that the regulated activities— possession of firearms near schools and gender-motivated violence — could and did have significant effects on economic activity. In both cases the majority rejected those arguments, largely on the ground that, if accepted, similar effects could be invoked in every case, and the Commerce Clause would become, in effect, a grant of general governing authority. See Lopez, 514 U.S. at 564, 115 S.Ct. 1624 (disfavoring the government's expansive understanding of the Commerce Clause because it would leave the Court hard pressed to posit any activity by an individual that Congress [would be] without power to regulate); Morrison, 529 U.S. at 615, 120 S.Ct. 1740 (If accepted, petitioners' reasoning would allow Congress to regulate any crime as long as the nationwide, aggregated impact of that crime has substantial effects on employment, production, transit, or consumption.). 39 No one would question that the possession of body armor by felons contributes to crime, or that crime has a measurable and significant impact on the national economy. But that was the argument rejected in Lopez and Morrison. Possession of firearms in the vicinity of schools can contribute to crime, and gender-motivated violence is crime. This Court, being bound by the precedents of Lopez and Morrison, therefore cannot hold that simply because body armor facilitates crime, the subject falls within Congress's commerce power. 40 Indeed, application of section 931 in this case has an even more attenuated relation to interstate commerce than the possession of firearms in Lopez — let alone the actual commission of violent offenses in Morrison. Unlike carrying a firearm in the vicinity of a school, wearing body armor is not an inherently threatening act. Much of the time, wearing body armor is an act of self-defense, which reduces rather than increases crime. This case illustrates the point: Mr. Patton was not armed at the time he was apprehended and — according to his story — was wearing the vest solely because his prior gang activity, now abandoned, made him vulnerable to attack. If the statute were limited to possession of body armor in conjunction with an offensive weapon, or to the use of body armor in the commission of a crime affecting interstate commerce, which were the scenarios motivating its enactment, 6 the connection would be less attenuated. As it is, however, application of section 931 to the circumstances of this case cannot be reconciled with Lopez and Morrison. 41 Moreover, the dissenters' arguments in Lopez and Morrison regarding the substantial effect of the regulated conduct on interstate commerce largely rested on the frequent incidence, and therefore significant aggregated effect, of the conduct. See e.g., Lopez, 514 U.S. at 616, 619-27, 115 S.Ct. 1624 (Breyer, J., dissenting); Morrison, 529 U.S. at 659-60, 120 S.Ct. 1740 (Breyer, J., dissenting). The theory was that widespread conduct, occurring nationwide, has national consequences and warrants a national response. The House Report on section 931, by contrast, contained a Congressional Budget Office estimate, based on information from the U.S. Sentencing Commission, that the prohibition on possession of body armor by felons would probably affect fewer than 10 cases each year. H.R.Rep. No. 107-193, pt. 1, at 7 (2001). Ten criminal cases a year is at the other end of the spectrum from Lopez and Morrison. The CBO estimate shows that the effect on interstate commerce of felons' possession of body armor is probably negligible and certainly far from substantial.