Court Opinion

ID: 9498644
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 17:23:47.222008+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:58:58.497952
License: Public Domain

FERGUSON, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
The Constitution cannot be interpreted according to the principle that the end justifies the means. The sexual abuse of children abroad is despicable, but we should not, and need not, refashion our Constitution to address it. The majority holds that “travel in foreign commerce, coupled with engagement in a commercial transaction while abroad, implicates foreign commerce to a constitutionally adequate degree.” Maj. op. at 1114. I respectfully disagree.
The Constitution authorizes Congress “[t]o regulate Commerce with foreign Nations.” Art. I, § 8, cl. 3. The activity regulated by 18 U.S.C. § 2423(c), illicit sexual conduct, does not in any sense of the phrase relate to commerce with foreign nations. Rather, § 2423(c) is a criminal statute that punishes private conduct fundamentally divorced from foreign commerce. Article I, section 8, clause 3, while giving Congress broad authority over our commercial relations with other nations, is not a grant of international police power. I respectfully dissent from the majority’s assertion that the Commerce Clause authorizes Congress to regulate an activity with a bare economic component, as long as that activity occurs subsequent to some form of international travel. I also note that the conduct in this case will not go unpunished, as the reasonable course of action remains of recognizing Cambodia’s authority to prosecute Clark under its own criminal laws.
I.
Our national government is a government of “enumerated powers,” see U.S. Const. art. I, § 8, which presupposes powers that are not enumerated, and therefore not accorded to Congress, see Gibbons v. Ogden, 22 U.S. (9 Wheat.) 1, 85, 6 L.Ed. 23 (1824). As such, the Commerce Clause is “subject to outer limits.” United States v. Lopez, 514 U.S. 549, 556-57, 115 S.Ct. 1624, 131 L.Ed.2d 626 (1995). Through a long line of cases, the Supreme Court has developed a tri-category framework that helps courts ascertain these outer limits, and whether a particular enactment exceeds them. See, e.g., Gonzales v. Raich, — U.S.-,-, 125 S.Ct. 2195, 2205, 162 L.Ed.2d 1 (2005). In the foreign commerce context, the majority would replace this time-tested framework with its own broad standard: whether a statute “has a constitutionally tenable nexus with foreign commerce.” Maj. op. at 1114. The majority views the foreign commerce prong of the Commerce Clause “independently from its domestic brethren,” id. at 1116, though Congress’s authority in both spheres is governed by the same constitutional language: “[t]o regulate Commerce,” art. I, § 8, cl. 3. In so doing, the majority goes farther than our precedent counsels and dispenses with the tri-catego-ry framework that has grounded Commerce Clause analysis in the modern era.1
*1118The majority portrays the raison d’etre of the tri-category framework as addressing “unique federalism concerns that define congressional authority in the interstate context.” Maj. op. at 1103 (emphasis added) (citing Lopez, 514 U.S. at 557, 115 S.Ct. 1624). It is thus able to conclude that this framework is generally inapplicable to foreign commerce cases. A fairer understanding of the tri-category framework is that it has evolved not only in response to federalism concerns that courts have read into Congress’s Interstate Commerce power, but also to give content to what it means generally “[t]o regulate Commerce,” art. I, § 8, cl. 3. Cf. Lopez, 514 U.S. at 551, 115 S.Ct. 1624 (citing not only federalism concerns in invalidating 18 U.S.C. § 922(q), but also the fact that the statute “neither regulates a commercial activity nor contains a requirement that the [gun] possession be connected in any way to interstate commerce”); United States v. Morrison, 529 U.S. 598, 610, 120 S.Ct. 1740, 146 L.Ed.2d 658 (2000) (noting that “the noneconomic, criminal nature of the conduct at issue” was central to the Supreme Court’s decision in Lopez). While Congress’s authority to regulate foreign commerce may well be broader than its authority to regulate interstate commerce, see, e.g., Japan Line, Ltd. v. County of Los Angeles, 441 U.S. 434, 448, 99 S.Ct. 1813, 60 L.Ed.2d 336 (1979), its authority in the foreign sphere is not different in kind. In both spheres, Congress is only authorized “[t]o regulate Commerce,” art. I, § 8, cl. 3, and not those activities that are fundamentally divorced from commerce. So while the majority correctly notes that “[flederalism and state sovereignty concerns do not restrict Congress’s power over foreign commerce,” maj. op. at 1113, it fails properly to consider the restrictions on the scope of Congress’s Foreign Commerce power that emanate from the constitutional text itself, which the tricategory framework also helps elucidate.
II.
Under the tri-category framework, and contrary to the District Court’s conclusion, § 2423(c) is not a regulation of the channels of foreign commerce. Section 2423(c) lacks any of the tangible links to the channels of commerce that would justify upholding it under Congress’s Foreign Commerce power.
The Supreme Court has held that Congress’s authority to regulate the channels of commerce encompasses keeping those channels “free from immoral and injurious uses.” Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc. v. United States, 379 U.S. 241, 256, 85 S.Ct. 348, 13 L.Ed.2d 258 (1964) (internal quotation marks omitted). Thus, Congress has the authority to criminalize the international transport of children for the purpose of sexual exploitation in the U.S. because such transport is an immoral and injurious use of the channels of commerce. Cf. United States v. Hersh, 297 F.3d 1233, 1238 (11th Cir.2002) (upholding the conviction of a defendant who transported a Honduran boy to Florida to engage in *1119sexual relations). Congress also has the authority to criminalize travel “for the purpose” of engaging in illicit sexual conduct, since travel with such harmful intent constitutes an injurious use of the channels of foreign commerce. See, e.g., United States v. Bredimus, 352 F.3d 200, 207-08 (5th Cir.2003).2 We have not necessarily limited Congress’s reach under its channels of commerce authority based on the cessation of movement. Thus, this Court found it a proper congressional exercise in United States v. Cummings to prevent persons from retaining children abroad after they first made use of the channels of foreign commerce wrongfully to remove the children from the U.S. 281 F.3d 1046, 1050 (9th Cir.2002); see also United States v. Shahani-Jahromi, 286 F.Supp.2d 723, 734 (E.D.Va.2003) (holding that wrongful retention of a child in a foreign country, which impeded that child’s travel back to the U.S. through the channels of commerce, provided a sufficient basis for Congress to exercise its Foreign Commerce power).
Under this rubric, the current 18 U.S.C. § 2423(b) contains a defensible link to the channels of foreign commerce, as it covers people who “[tjravel with intent to engage in illicit sexual conduct.” See, e.g., Nick Madigan, Man, 86, Convicted Under New Law Against Americans Who Go Abroad to Molest Minors, N.Y. Times, Nov. 20, 2004, at A12 (defendant was arrested at Los Angeles International Airport with “dozens of pornographic photographs of himself with Filipino girls, sex toys and 100 pounds of chocolate and candy”). The activity regulated by § 2423(b), intention to engage in illicit sexual conduct, is at least tenably related to the channels of commerce in that the defendant engages in travel with illegitimate ends. The person indicted under § 2423(b) has a plane ticket in hand, has paid a travel agent to set up the trip, or has otherwise committed an act that is both wrongful (because of the criminal intent) and tangibly related to the channels of commerce.
By contrast, § 2423(c) neither punishes the act of traveling in foreign commerce, or the wrongful use or impediment of use of the channels of foreign commerce. Rather, it punishes future conduct in a foreign country entirely divorced from the act of traveling except for the fact that the travel occurs at some point prior to the regulated conduct. The statute does not require any wrongful intent at the time the channel is being used, nor does it require a temporal link between the “travel[ ] in foreign commerce,” 18 U.S.C. § 2423(c), and the underlying regulated activity.
The majority suggests that § 2423(c) “can[ ] be viewed as a valid regulation of the ‘channels of commerce,’ ” maj. op. at 1116, because Congress’s channels of commerce authority extends to regulating crimes committed abroad that are “necessarily tied to travel in foreign commerce,” id. But whereas the requisite ties to the channels of commerce exist in the case the majority cites, Cummings, 281 F.3d 1046, these ties are entirely absent in § 2423(c). The statute in Cummings prohibited conduct — wrongful retention of children abroad — that was necessarily tied to injurious uses of the channels of commerce. The defendant in Cummings illegally transported his children to Germany so that he could retain them there, and his wrongful retention of them necessarily impeded their lawful use of the channels of commerce to return to the U.S. By contrast, § 2423(c) regulates an activity that is in no way connected to the wrongful use, or impediment of use, of the channels of foreign commerce. Section 2423(c) only *1120requires that the regulated conduct occur at some point subsequent — perhaps even years subsequent — to international travel. The travel may well be lawful — the statute does not require any criminal intent during travel, nor does it otherwise connect the regulated activity to an abuse of the channels of commerce.
The mere act of boarding an international flight, without more, is insufficient to bring all of Clark’s downstream activities that involve an exchange of value within the ambit of Congress’s Foreign Commerce power. On some level, every act by a U.S. citizen abroad takes place subsequent to an international flight or some form of “travel[] in foreign commerce.” 18 U.S.C. § 2423(c). This cannot mean that every act with a bare economic component that occurs downstream from that travel is subject to regulation by the United States under its Foreign Commerce power, or the Commerce Clause will have been converted into a general grant of police power. It is telling to note that, theoretically, the only U.S. citizens who could fall outside the reach of § 2423(c) if they engage in illicit sexual conduct abroad are those who never set foot in the United States (i.e., U.S. citizens by virtue of their parent’s citizenship), and thus never travel in “Commerce with foreign Nations.” Art. I, § 8, cl. 3. In short, § 2423(c) is divorced from its asserted Commerce Clause underpinnings. The statute does not set another “guidepost” regarding Congress’s Foreign Commerce power, contra United States v. Clark, 315 F.Supp.2d 1127, 1135 (W.D.Wash.2004) — it exceeds it.
III.
Rather than engaging in a losing “channels of commerce” analysis, the majority applies a general “rational nexus” standard in this case, maj. op. at 1117, and strains to find more foreign commerce in § 2423(c) than the act of boarding an international flight. Specifically, the majority characterizes the crime regulated by § 2423(c), illicit sexual conduct, as sufficiently related to “Commerce with foreign Nations,” art. I, § 8, cl. 3, to bring it under Congress’s Foreign Commerce authority.
First, the underlying regulated activity is not “quintessentially economic,” maj. op. at 1115, simply because it has a bare economic aspect. Just as “[gjender-motivated crimes of violence are not, in any sense of the phrase, economic activity,” Morrison, 529 U.S. at 613, 120 S.Ct. 1740, neither is “illicit sexual conduct.” The plain purpose of § 2423(c) is to regulate criminal conduct, not commerce. As the Supreme Court cautioned in Lopez, “depending on the level of generality, any activity can be looked upon as commercial.” 514 U.S. at 565, 115 S.Ct. 1624.
Further, the underlying act, even if considered economic or commercial, is certainly not a presence of commerce with foreign nations. In the most sterile terms, an act of paid sex with a minor that takes place overseas is not an act of commerce with other nations. Under the interpretation of the majority, the purchase of a lunch in France by an American citizen who traveled there by airplane would constitute a constitutional act of engaging in foreign commerce. Under such an interpretation, Congress could have the power to regulate the overseas activities of U.S. citizens many months or years after they had concluded their travel in foreign commerce, as long as the activities involved some sort of exchange of value — even if the partner in exchange was a U.S. entity that funneled the value back into the American economy. Analogously, the statute here does not even facially limit its application to sex with foreign minors in an effort to create a tenable link to “Commerce with foreign Nations.” Art. I, § 8, cl. 3. This observation may seem slightly absurd, but so is the task of trying to show *1121how sexual abuse of a minor overseas by a U.S. citizen constitutes an act of “Commerce with foreign Nations.” Id.
IV.
Viewed as a whole, it is clear that § 2423(c) does not relate to “Commerce with foreign Nations.” Id. Nor is § 2423(c) a constitutional exercise of Congress’s authority to regulate the channels of commerce. Sexual exploitation of children by foreigners is thoroughly condemnable, but the question before us is whether Congress properly invoked its power “[t]o regulate Commerce with foreign Nations,” id., in enacting § 2423(c) to address this problem. It did not. I therefore respectfully dissent.

. Though the majority asserts that it is applying "the traditional rational basis standard,” maj. op. at 1114 (citing Raich, 125 S.Ct. at 2211), this statement is misleading to the extent that rationality review in the Commerce Clause context is applied as part of the "sub*1118stantial effects” test, which is a more demanding inquiry than the open-ended "nexus” inquiry that the majority proposes. Compare Lopez, 514 U.S. at 561-63, 115 S.Ct. 1624, with maj. op. at 1114-17. Courts apply rationality review to assess whether Congress had a "rational basis” for concluding that a particular activity "substantially affects” interstate commerce, Raich, 125 S.Ct. at 2208, not to inquire generally "whether the statute bears a rational relationship to Congress’s authority under the [] Commerce Clause,” maj. op. at 1114. Raich is further distinguished by the fact that Congress’s power to effectuate a comprehensive regulatory scheme was central to that opinion, see 125 S.Ct. at 2206-07, while no comparably general regulation of foreign commerce exists in this case.

. The statute upheld in Bredimus was the former 18 U.S.C. § 2423(b), which preceded the present statute and which included an intent requirement.