Court Opinion

ID: 9428404
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:23:39.039793+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:18:11.614623
License: Public Domain

Justice Rehnquist,
concurring in the judgment.*
It is illuminating for purposes of reflection, if not for argument, to note that one of the greatest “fictions” of our federal system is that the Congress exercises only those powers delegated to it, while the remainder are reserved to the States or to the people. The manner in which this Court has construed the Commerce Clause amply illustrates the extent of this fiction. Although it is clear that the people, through the States, delegated authority to Congress to “regulate Commerce . . . among the several States,” U. S. Const., Art. I, *308§ 8, cl. 3, one could easily get the sense from this Court’s opinions that the federal system exists only at the sufferance of Congress.
As interpreted by the Court, Congress’ power under the Commerce Clause is broad indeed. The power has evolved through the years to include not simply the regulation of interstate commerce itself, as in Gibbons v. Ogden, 9 Wheat. 1 (1824), but also the power “to exclude from the commerce articles whose use in the states for which they are destined it may conceive to be injurious to the public health, morals or welfare, even though the state has not sought to regulate their use.” United States v. Darby, 312 U. S. 100, 114 (1941). In the Shreveport Rate Case, 234 U. S. 342, 351 (1914), the Court upheld the action of Congress in regulating the rates of intrastate railroads, reasoning that the commerce power included the power to “control ... all matters having such a close and substantial relation to interstate traffic . . . .” In NLRB v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp., 301 U. S. 1 (1937), the Court rejected the notion that certain kinds of activity were not in “commerce,” such as manufacturing, cf. United States v. E. C. Knight Co., 156 U. S. 1 (1895), and concluded that Congress may regulate labor relations in any manufacturing plant because a work stoppage at any such plant “would have a most serious effect upon interstate commerce.” 301 U. S., at 41. And in Wickard v. Filburn, 317 U. S. 111 (1942), the Court expanded the scope of the Commerce Clause to include the regulation of acts which taken alone might not have a substantial economic effect on interstate commerce, such as a wheat farmer’s own production, but which might reasonably be deemed nationally significant in their cumulative effect, such as altering the supply-and-demand relationships in the interstate commodity market. See also Perez v. United States, 402 U. S. 146, 154 (1971) (“Where the class of activities is regulated and that class is within the reach of federal power, the courts have no power ffo excise, as trivial, individual instances’ of the class”). As *309summarized by one commentator: “In recent years, Congress has relied upon the 'cumulative effect’ principle as its constitutional justification for civil rights legislation, certain criminal statutes, regulatory measures affecting the sale of foods and additives, and a registration law for drug producers. In each case, congressional fact-findings stressed that the regulation of local incidents of an activity was necessary to abate a cumulative evil affecting national commerce.” L. Tribe, American Constitutional Law.237 (1978).
Despite the holdings of these cases, and the broad dicta often contained therein, there are constitutional limits on the power of Congress to regulate pursuant to the Commerce Clause. As Chief Justice Hughes explained:
“Undoubtedly the scope of this power must be considered in light of our dual system of government and may not be extended so as to embrace effects on interstate commerce so indirect and remote that to embrace them, in view of our complex society, would effectually obliterate the distinction between what is national and what is local and create a completely centralized government.” NLRB v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp., supra, at 37.
And Justice Cardozo, in his cogent writing on the subject, often expressed his concern about too broad a reading of the commerce power. In his concurring opinion in Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States, 295 U. S. 495, 554-555 (1935), he observed:
“There is a view of causation that would obliterate the distinction between what is national and what is local in the activities of commerce. Motion at the outer rim is communicated perceptibly, though minutely, to recording instruments at the center. A society such as ours 'is an elastic medium which transmits all tremors throughout its territory; the only question is of size.’ . . . The law is not indifferent to considerations of degree. Activities local in their immediacy do not become interstate *310and national because of distant repercussions. ... To find immediacy or directness here is to find it almost everywhere. If centripetal forces are to be isolated to the exclusion of the forces that oppose and counteract them, there will be an end to our federal system.”
Justice Cardozo elaborated on this point in his separate opinion in Carter v. Carter Coal Co., 298 U. S. 238, 327 (1936).
“Mining and agriculture and manufacture are not interstate commerce considered by themselves, yet their relationship to that commerce may be such that for the protection of the one there is need to regulate the other. Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States .... Sometimes it is said that the relation must be ‘direct’ to bring that power into play. In many circumstances such a description will be sufficiently precise to meet the needs of the occasion. But a great principle of constitutional law is not susceptible of comprehensive statement in an adjective. The underlying thought is merely this, that ‘the law is not indifferent to considerations of degree.’ Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States, supra, concurring opinion, p. 554. It cannot be indifferent to them without an expansion of the commerce clause that would absorb or imperil the reserved powers of the states. At times, as in the case cited, the waves of causation will have radiated so far that their undulatory motion, if discernible at all, will be too faint or obscure, too broken by cross-currents, to be heeded by the law.”
Thus it would be a mistake to conclude that Congress’ power to regulate pursuant to the Commerce Clause is unlimited. Some activities may be so private or local in nature that they simply may not be in commerce. Nor is it sufficient that the person or activity reached have some nexus with interstate commerce. Our cases have consistently held that the regulated activity must have a substantial effect on *311interstate commerce. E. g., NLRB v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp., 301 U. S., at 37 (local activities may be regulated if they have a “close and substantial relation to interstate commerce”). Moreover, simply because Congress may conclude that a particular activity substantially affects interstate commerce does not necessarily make it so. Congress’ findings must be supported by a “rational basis” and are reviewable by the courts. Cf. Perez v. United States, 402 U. S., at 157 (Stewart, J., dissenting).* In short, unlike the reserved police powers of the States, which are plenary unless challenged as violating some specific provision of the Constitution, the connection with interstate commerce is itself a jurisdictional prerequisite for any substantive legislation by Congress under the Commerce Clause.
In many ways, the Court’s opinions in these cases are consistent with that approach. In both the Virginia and Indiana cases, the Court exhaustively analyzes Congress’ articulated justifications for the exercise of its power under the Commerce Clause and concludes that Congress’ detailed factual findings as to the effect of surface mining on interstate commerce are sufficient to justify the exercise of that power. Though there can be no doubt that Congress in regulating surface mining has stretched its authority to the “nth degree,” our prior precedents compel me to agree with the Court’s conclusion. I therefore concur in the judgments of the Court.
There is, however, a troublesome difference between what the Court does and what it says. In both cases, the Court asserts that regulation will be upheld if Congress had a rational basis for finding that the regulated activity affects *312interstate commerce. Virginia Surface Mining, ante, at 276; Indiana, post, at 323-325. The Court takes this statement of the proper “test” from Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc. v. United States, 379 U. S. 241, 258 (1964). In my view, the Court misstates the test. As noted above, it has long been established that the commerce power does not reach activity which merely “affects” interstate commerce. There must instead be a showing that regulated activity has a substantial effect on that commerce. See NLRB v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp., supra; Shreveport Rate Cases, 234 U. S. 342 (1914); Wickard v. Filburn, 317 U. S., at 125 (local activity may be reached by Congress if “it exerts a substantial economic effect on interstate commerce”); North American Co. v. SEC, 327 U. S. 686, 705 (1946) (Congress may attack an evil which bears a “substantial relationship to interstate commerce”). As recently as Maryland v. Wirtz, 392 U. S. 183, 197, n. 27 (1968), Justice Harlan stressed that “[n] either here nor in Wickard has the Court declared that Congress may use a relatively trivial impact on commerce as an excuse for broad general regulation of state or private activities.” Even in Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc., in the paragraph just prior to the passage relied on by the Court here, the Court emphasized that Congress had the power to regulate local activities “which might have a substantial and harmful effect upon that commerce.” 379 U. S., at 258. Though I believe the Court errs in its statement of the “test,” it may be that I read too much into the Court’s choice of language. In the Virginia case, for example, it does mention at one point that Congress did have a “rational basis for concluding that surface coal mining has substantial effects on interstate commerce.” Ante, at 280.
In sum, my difficulty with some of the recent Commerce Clause jurisprudence is that the Court often seems to forget that legislation enacted by Congress is subject to two different kinds of challenge, while that enacted by the States is subject to only one kind of challenge. Neither Congress nor *313the States may act in a manner prohibited by any provision of the Constitution. Congress must show that the activity it seeks to regulate has a substantial effect on interstate commerce. It is my uncertainty as to whether the Court intends to broaden, by some of its language, this test that leads me to concur only in the judgments.

[This opinion applies also to No. 80-231, Hodel, Acting Secretary of the Interior, et al. v. Indiana et al., post, p. 314.]

Of course, once the power of Congress to regulate is established, the Court will rarely question the manner in which that power is exercised. E. g., U. S. Railroad Retirement Bd. v. Fritz, 449 U. S. 166 (1980). Within its sphere of authority, the power of Congress is broad and should only rarely be subject to judicial invalidation. The question here, in contrast, is whether Congress even has the authority to act.