Opinion ID: 3011287
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: by force or threat of force or by physical

Text: obstruction, intentionally injures, intimidates or interferes with or attempts to injure, intimate or interfere with any person because that person is or has been, or in order to intimidate such person or any other person or any class of persons from, obtaining or providing reproductive health services; . . . . (3) intentionally damages or destroys the property of a facility, or attempts to do so, because such facility provides reproductive health services . . . shall be subject to the penalties provided in subsection (b) and the civil remedies provided in subsection (c) . . . . 18 U.S.C. S 248. The services provided by abortion clinics are clearly commercial in nature, conducted as they are in exchange for money. But these services are not the activities targeted by the legislation. FACE prohibits third parties from interfering with patients and staff entering abortion clinics, as well as from inflicting damage to the property itself. By its plain language, the statute is directed against the conduct of those external to a clinic's operations. As the proscribed activity, a protestor's conduct does not involve a purchase, sale, or any exchange of value in return 29 for the rendering of a service, and cannot in any sense be deemed economic or commercial in character. Although blockades may reduce a clinic's revenue, the prohibited conduct is fundamentally criminal in nature and does not fit easily within the category of commercial activity. The fact that criminal conduct may also have financial effects does not transform that activity into one commercial in nature. Murder and robbery have monetary consequences, but that does not transform criminal codes into commercial regulation. Morrison made it clear that the nature of the activity to be restricted is determined by an examination of the conduct itself, and not by such external factors as financial effects, which are one step removed from the statute's focus. Morrison, 120 S. Ct. at 1750. In both Lopez and Morrison, thefinancial effects of the prohibited conduct were not disputed. Justice Breyer outlined in his Lopez dissent the obvious links between the economy and gun violence. Lopez, 514 U.S. at 619-22 (Breyer, J., dissenting). Justice Souter's dissent in Morrison cited a Senate report from the legislative history that estimated the impact of violent crimes against women to be, at minimum, $3 billion annually. Morrison, 120 S. Ct. at 1762 (Souter, J., dissenting). The Court nonetheless concluded in Lopez that the Gun-Free School Zones Act was a criminal statute that by its terms has nothing to do with `commerce' or any sort of economic enterprise, Lopez, 514 U.S. at 561, and said in Morrison that[g]endermotivated crimes of violence are not, in any sense of the phrase, economic activity. Morrison, 120 S. Ct. at 1751. It is apparent that the Court examined the prohibited conduct without reference to its economic effects. Courts reviewing FACE should employ a similarly disciplined analysis. When considering the limits of congressional power, the Court has adopted a practical conception of commercial regulation. Lopez, 514 U.S. at 574 (Kennedy, J., concurring); see also Morrison, 120 S. Ct. at 1750 (quoting Lopez). But to sustain FACE, courts must reject that concept. The statute does not resemble a commercial regulation, but instead a typical exercise of a state's police 30 power: prohibiting trespass, intimidation, and violence; and providing criminal sanctions as well as injunctions. The threshold inquiry articulated in Lopez and repeated in Morrison is consistent with the Court's prior Commerce Clause decisions. As the Court wrote, thus far in our Nation's history our cases have upheld Commerce Clause regulation of intrastate activity only where that activity is economic in nature. Morrison, 120 S. Ct. at 1751. Two cases cited by the Court in that context provide a useful contrast to the present dispute. In Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc. v. United States , 379 U.S. 241, 261-62 (1964), and the parallel case of Katzenbach v. McClung, 379 U.S. 294, 305 (1964), the Court upheld legislation requiring hotels and restaurants to make accommodations open to black patrons as well as white. The regulated enterprises were clearly within Morrison's definition of economic activity. It was the hoteliers and restauranteurs themselves, in the operation of their business, who had to alter their conduct in order to comply with the law. The legislation did not apply to third parties whose conduct may or may not have been commercial. FACE does not in any way control the operation of a clinic in its procedures or selection of patients. That distinction, as well as the lack of a jurisdictional element, separates FACE from the Civil Rights legislation upheld in Heart of Atlanta and Katzenbach. To cavalierly dismiss the traditional distinctions between criminal and commercial conduct is to downplay the role that the economic nature of the regulated activity plays in our Commerce Clause analysis. Morrison, 120 S. Ct. at 1750. Both Lopez and Morrison made the inquiry into commercial character a key element to their holdings. In the present case, the only reasoned answer to the question of whether the blockading is commercial in character must be in the negative.