United States v. Lopez

• Alfonso Lopez, Jr carried a handgun and cartridges into his high school in San Antonio, Texas. He was charged with violating the Gun-Free School Zones Act of 1990, aka 18 U.S.C. &#167  922(q).
• The government argued that possession of a firearm in a school zone can be expected to lead to violent crime, which can be expected to affect economy and traveling in the area, as well as to produce a citizenry with less of an education due to the distraction of the violent crime and in the long-term, a weaker economy. Thus, possession of a firearm at a school falls under jurisdiction of the Interstate Commerce Clause.
• The US Supreme Court held that while Congress had broad lawmaking authority under the Interstate Commerce Clause, it was not unlimited, and did not apply to something as far from commerce as carrying handguns, especially when there was no evidence that carrying them affected the economy on a massive scale.
• The Court held that possession of a gun near a school is not an economic activity that has a substantial effect on interstate commerce. A law prohibiting guns near schools is a criminal statute that does not relate to commerce or any sort of economic activity.
• A later case, United States v. Morrison, ruled that Congress could not make such laws even when there was evidence of aggregate affect on the economy.
• Justice Rehnquist, delivering the opinion of the court, wrote that Congress had the power to regulate only:
• The channels of commerce,
• The instrumentalities of commerce, or persons or things in interstate commerce, even if the threat comes from intrastate activities, and
• Action that substantially affects interstate commerce.
• The Court dismissed the government's argument, reasoning that if Congress could regulate something so far removed from commerce, then it could regulate anything, and since the Constitution clearly creates Congress as a body with enumerated powers, this could not be so.
• "To uphold the Government's contentions here, we would have to pile inference upon inference in a manner that would bid fair to convert congressional authority under the Interstate Commerce Clause to a general police power of the sort retained by the States. Admittedly, some of our prior cases have taken long steps down that road, giving great deference to Congressional action. The broad language in these opinions has suggested the possibility of additional expansion, but we decline here to proceed any further. To do so would require us to conclude that the Constitution's enumeration of powers does not presuppose something not enumerated, and that there never will be a distinction between what is truly national and what is truly local. This we are unwilling to do."
• It is important to note that although the ruling stopped a decades-long trend of inclusiveness under the Interstate Commerce Clause, it did not reverse any past ruling about the meaning of the clause.
• The Court specifically looked to four factors in their determination.
• Whether the activity was non-economic as opposed to economic activity; previous cases involved economic activity.
• Jurisdictional element: whether the gun had moved in interstate commerce.
• Whether there had been Congressional findings of an economic link between guns and education.
• How attenuated the link was between the regulated activity and interstate commerce.
• The decision was very split (5-4).  Justice Stevens and the other dissenters mostly agreed with the Statute's theory that guns and violence affect interstate commerce.
• They also argue that there is empirical evidence to back up the argument that guns reduce the quality of education.
• They also argue that finding for this law would not open the floodgates to allow Congress to regulate everything.
• "A holding that a particular Statute before us falls within the commerce power would not expand the scope of that Clause.  Rather it simply would apply pre-existing law to changing economic circumstances."
• They also argued that previous decisions didn't depend on whether or not the actual activity was commerce, only that it "exerted a substantial economic effect on Interstate Commerce."  (See Wickard v. Filburn).
• They also argued that this ruling jeopardized a whole bunch of other Congressional Statutes that use similar grounds.
• Unlike the ruling in Katzenbach v. McClung, the Court in this case decided that they should not be maximally deferential to Congress, since they are the ones who are supposed to determine what the limits of the Interstate Commerce Clause is.  This Court decided that they had the right to step in and limit Congressional power, and the Court would decide what was and wasn't part of the Interstate Commerce Clause.