Court Opinion

ID: 9492576
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 14:44:26.970615+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:55:22.574868
License: Public Domain

ROTH, Circuit Judge, concurring:
I write separately because, although I agree with the majority that we should affirm Rodia’s conviction, I do not agree with the separate analysis which the majority gives (1) to the jurisdictional element in Part III of its opinion and (2) to the effect of child pornography on interstate commerce in Part IV. I believe that both issues should be considered together. Their interrelationship is helpful in determining the constitutionality of the statute.
I do accept the majority’s conclusion that the fact that a statute has a jurisdictional element may not be sufficient in and of itself to establish the statute’s constitutionality. When, however, we are presented with a statute, such as the present one, which has been repeatedly held to cover conduct that affects interstate commerce, we must keep the previous history in mind when we examine the jurisdictional element of an amendment to the statute.
We are not in the present ease plowing new ground, as was the situation in United States v. Lopez, 514 U.S. 549, 563, 115 S.Ct. 1624, 131 L.Ed.2d 626 (1995), where there were no congressional findings that the possession of guns in a school zone substantially affected interstate commerce. Id. Here, we do have legislative findings to aid judicial evaluation of the effect of child pornography on interstate commerce. Cf. United States v. Rybar, 103 F.3d 273, 279 (3d Cir.1996) (determining that “there are legislative findings to aid judicial evaluation of the effect of machine guns on interstate commerce.”)
As the majority points out in Part IV, legislative history concerning predecessor and successor child pornography statutes supports the reasonableness of Congress’s determination that a nexus exists between child pornography and interstate commerce. Because we have such a history, the jurisdictional element of § 2252(a)(4)(B) should be examined with that history in mind. These legislative findings are relevant not only to the majority’s analysis in Part IV of the effect of child pornography on interstate commerce. They are also relevant to the evaluation of the jurisdictional element in Part III be*483cause that jurisdictional element is directed at the same evil as the other provisions of the statute — interstate trafficking in child pornography. I would defer to Congress’s judgment that the regulation of materials, such as blank Polaroid film,1 that have been in the stream of interstate commerce, is integral to its ability to regulate the interstate trafficking in child pornography — even in an instance when that film is used to create child pornography that is possessed intrastate.
For the above reasons, in the context of the present case, I do not agree with the statement of the majority that “[a] jurisdictional element is only sufficient to ensure a statute’s constitutionality when the element either limits the regulation to interstate activity or ensures that the intrastate activity to be regulated falls within one of the three categories of congressional power.” Maj. Op. at 473. I believe the above statement is too limited. We cannot examine the jurisdictional element in isolation. An additional factor in the analysis of whether the jurisdiction element limits the regulation to interstate activity must be the nature of the underlying activity, here child pornography, and prior determinations of the effect that the activity in question has on interstate commerce.
As I have described above, I believe that the jurisdictional element here does limit the regulation to activity affecting interstate commerce because legislative findings have established the connection between child pornography and interstate commerce; the further requirement that the material on which the pornography was produced have moved in interstate commerce on a case case basis.

. The essential components of child pornography are film and video. Without these basic components, pornographic images of children — which even Rodia concedes Congress may regulate under the Commerce Clause if transported interstate — could not be created. Moreover, instant film, such as the Polaroid film at issue in this case, is particularly important to both possessors and manufacturers of pornography; commercial processing of pornographic images places the creator of the pornography in great jeopardy of being reported to authorities by commercial developers. Thus, while Polaroid film may seem a relatively odd commodity for the federal government to regulate, the onus for this anomaly lies upon those who manufacture and possess child pornography.