Structure of Government Legislative Power Commerce Clause Flashcards
Fact: A New York state law gave two individuals the exclusive right to operate steamboats on waters within state jurisdiction. Laws like this one were duplicated elsewhere which led to friction as some states would require foreign (out-of-state) boats to pay substantial fees for navigation privileges. In this case a steamboat owner who did business between New York and New Jersey challenged the monopoly that New York had granted, which forced him to obtain a special operating permit from the state to navigate on its waters.
_Gibbons v. Ogden (1824)
Issue:_ Did the State of New York exercise authority in a realm reserved exclusively to Congress, namely, the regulation of interstate commerce?
Rule: Art 1, Section 8, Clause 3
Holding: ** The New York law was invalid by virtue of the Supremacy Clause. **Commerce is more than just the buying and selling of the good it also includes the navigation and transit of the goods. Among the states does not stop at the state borders but goes as far as it does within the state. Federal government can make laws but the states also retain power, states just can not supercede the federal govt.
Facts: The defendants in the case were arrested and convicted under an Act of Congress of 1895 that made it illegal to send or conspire to send lottery tickets across state lines.
_Champion v. Ames (1900)
Issue:_ Did the transport of lottery tickets by independent carriers constitute “commerce” that Congress could regulate under the Commerce Clause?
**Rule: **Art. 1 Section 8 Clause 3
Holding: lottery tickets were indeed “subjects of traffic,” and that independent carriers may be regulated under the Commerce Clause. The Court emphasized the broad discretion Congress enjoys in regulating commerce, noting that this power “is plenary [absolute], is complete in itself, and is subject to no limitations except such as may be found in the Constitution.” The Court argued that Congress was merely assisting those states that wished to protect public morals by prohibiting lotteries within their borders.
Facts: The Keating-Owen Child Labor Act prohibited the interstate shipment of goods produced by child labor. Reuben Dagenhart’s father had sued on behalf of his freedom to allow his fourteen year old son to work in a textile mill.
_Hammer v. Dagenhart (1917)
Issue:_Does the congressional act violate the Commerce Clause, the Tenth Amendment, or the Fifth Amendment?
Rule: Art. 1 Sec. 8 Clause 3
Holding: Production was not commerce, and thus outside the power of Congress to regulate. And the regulation of production was reserved by the Tenth Amendment to the states. Day wrote that “the powers not expressly delegated to the national government are reserved” to the states and to the people
Facts: In 1938, Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act to regulate many aspects of employment including minimum wages, maximum weekly hours, and child labor. Corporations which engaged in interstate commerce or produced goods which were sold in other states were punished for violating the statute.
_US v. Darby (1940)
Issue:_ Was the act a legitimate exercise of Congress’s power to regulate interstate commerce?
Rule: Art. 1 Sec. 8 Clause 3
Holding: affectation doctrine – third form of congress power substantial effect. Can regulate anything that has a substantial effect on interstate commerce. the “motive and purpose of a regulation of interstate commerce are matters for the legislative judgment. substandard labor conditions since they have a significant impact on interstate commerce.
Facts: Filburn was a small farmer in Ohio. He was given a wheat acreage allotment of 11.1 acres under a Department of Agriculture directive which authorized the government to set production quotas for wheat. Filburn harvested nearly 12 acres of wheat above his allotment. He claimed that he wanted thewheat for use on his farm, including feed for his poultry and livestock. Fiburn was penalized. He argued that the excess wheat was unrelated to commerce since he grew it for his own use.
_Wickard v. Filburn (1942)
Issue:_ Is the amendment subjecting Filburn to acreage restrictions in violation of the Constitution because Congress has no power to regulate activities local in nature?
Rule: Art. 1 Sec. 8 Clause 3
Holding: The rule laid down by Justice Jackson is that even if an activity is local and not regarded as commerce, “it may still, whatever its nature, be reached by Congress if it exerts a substantial economic effect on interstate commerce, and this irrespective of whether such effect is what might at some earlier time have been defined as ‘direct’ or ‘indirect.’”
Facts: Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 forbade racial discrimination by places of public accommodation if their operations affected commerce. The Heart of Atlanta Motel in Atlanta, Georgia, refused to accept Black Americans and was charged with violating Title II.
_Heart of Atlanta Motel v. US (1964)
Issue:_ Did Congress, in passing Title II of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, exceed its Commerce Clause powers by depriving motels, such as the Heart of Atlanta, of the right to choose their own customers? Rule: Art. 1 Sec. 8 Clause 3 Holding: the Commerce Clause allowed Congress to regulate local incidents of commerce, and that the Civil Right Act of 1964 passed constitutional muster. Title II was “carefully limited to enterprises having a direct and substantial relation to the interstate flow of goods and people. . .” thus concluded that places of public accommodation had no “right” to select guests as they saw fit, free from governmental regulation.
Facts: ** **The owner of Ollie’s Barbecue, in Birmingham Alabama, refused to serve blacks in apparent violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Part of the Act prevented restaurants serving interstate travelers, or receiving a substantial amount of their food from interstate commerce, from discriminating on the basis of race.
_Katzenbach v. McClung (1964)
Issue_: Does a restaurant’s refusal to serve blacks burden interstate commerce to an extent that Congress can legitimately prohibit such discrimination?
Rule: Art. 1 Sec. 8 Clause 3
Holding: The Court found that discrimination in restaurants posed significant burdens on “the interstate flow of food and upon the movement on products generally.”
Facts: The Low-Level Radioactive Waste Management Act Amendments of 1985 required states alone or in compacts with other states to dispose of such radioactive waste within their borders. New York State and Allegany and Courtland counties were frustrated in their compliance efforts by resistance from residents to proposed radioactive waste sites and a lack of cooperation from neighboring states. New York filed suit against the federal government, questioning the authority of Congress to regulate state waste management.
_NY v. US (1991)
Issue:_ Does the Low-Level Waste Act violate the Tenth Amendment and the “guarantee clause” of Article Four?
Rule: Art. 1 Sec. 8 Clause 3
Holding: reasoning that Congress had the authority under the Commerce Clause to use financial rewards and access to disposal sites as incentives for state waste management. The third provision, the “take-title” qualification, stipulated that states must take legal ownership and liability for low-level waste or by the regulatory act. “Either type of federal action,” wrote Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, “would ‘commandeer’ state governments into the service of federal regulatory purposes, and would for this reason be inconsistent with the Constitution’s division of authority between federal and state governments.” This last provision violated the Tenth Amendment.
Facts: The Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act (Brady Bill) required “local chief law enforcement officers” (CLEOs) to perform background-checks on prospective handgun purchasers, until such time as the Attorney General establishes a federal system for this purpose. County sheriffs Jay Printz and Richard Mack, separately challenged the constitutionality of this interim provision of the Brady Bill on behalf of CLEOs in Montana and Arizona respectively. In both cases District Courts found the background-checks unconstitutional, but ruled that since this requirement was severable from the rest of the Brady Bill a voluntary background-check system could remain. On appeal from the Ninth Circuit’s ruling that the interim background-check provisions were constitutional, the Supreme Court granted certiorari and consolidated the two cases deciding this one along with Mack v. United States.
_Printz v. US (1996)
Issue:_ Using the Necessary and Proper Clause of Article I as justification, can Congress temporarily require state CLEOs to regulate handgun purchases by performing those duties called for by the Brady Bill’s handgun applicant background-checks?
Rule:** **Art. 1 Sec. 8 Clause 18
Holding: The Court constructed its opinion on the old principle that state legislatures are not subject to federal direction. The Court explained that while Congress may require the federal government to regulate commerce directly, in this case by performing background-checks on applicants for handgun ownership, the Necessary and Proper Clause does not empower it to compel state CLEOs to fulfill its federal tasks for it - even temporarily.
Facts: Alfonzo Lopez, a 12th grade high school student, carried a concealed weapon into his San Antonio, Texas high school. He was charged under Texas law with firearm possession on school premises. The next day, the state charges were dismissed after federal agents charged Lopez with violating a federal criminal statute, the Gun-Free School Zones Act of 1990. The act forbids “any individual knowingly to possess a firearm at a place that [he] knows…is a school zone.” Lopez was found guilty following a bench trial and sentenced to six months’ imprisonment and two years’ supervised release.
_US v. Lopez (1995)
Issue:_ Is the 1990 Gun-Free School Zones Act, forbidding individuals from knowingly carrying a gun in a school zone, unconstitutional because it exceeds the power of Congress to legislate under the Commerce Clause?
Rule: Art. 1 Sec. 8 Clause 3
Holding: Yes. The possession of a gun in a local school zone is not an economic activity that might, through repetition elsewhere, have a substantial effect on interstate commerce. The law is a criminal statute that has nothing to do with “commerce” or any sort of economic activity. Decided it must have a genuine economic nature and jurisdictional “interstate” nexus. The three broad categories of activity that Congress may regulate under its commerce power are (a) the use of the channels of interstate commerce (b) Congress is empowered to regulate and protect the instrumentalities of interstate commerce, or persons or things in interstate commerce, even though the threat may come only from intrastate activities and (c) Congress’ commerce authority includes the power to regulate those activities having a substantial relation to interstate commerce, i.e., those activities that substantially affect interstate commerce
Facts: Alleged rape of a women by morrison and crawford varsity football players. She sues them and the school under Violence Against Women Act of 1994 (VAWA), which congress explicitly gave authority under the commerce clause and 14 amendment.
_US v. Morrison (1999)
Issue:_ Does Congress have the authority to enact the Violence Against Women Act of 1994 under either the Commerce Clause or Fourteenth Amendment?
Rule: Art. 1 Sec. 8 Clause 3, 14 amendment
Holding: Applied 3 prongs of Lopez.the Court held that Congress lacked the authority to enact a statute under the Commerce Clause or the Fourteenth Amendment since the statute did not regulate an activity that substantially affected interstate commerce nor did it redress harm caused by the state.
Facts: In 1996 California voters passed the Compassionate Use Act, legalizing marijuana for medical use. California’s law conflicted with the federal Controlled Substances Act (CSA), which banned possession of marijuana. After the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) seized doctor-prescribed marijuana from a patient’s home, a group of medical marijuana users sued the DEA and U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft in federal district court.
_Gonzales v. Raich (2004)
Issue:_ Does the Controlled Substances Act (21 U.S.C. 801) exceed Congress’ power under the commerce clause as applied to the intrastate cultivation and possession of marijuana for medical use?
Rule: Art. 1 Sec. 8 Clause 3
Holding: Congress’ commerce clause power to regulate purely local activities that are part of a “class of activities” with a substantial effect on interstate commerce. If it is non economic activity it will be very hard to show the effect because the aggregation effect has no applicability. Cost of crime as having an economic impact is one that it now says it clearly rejected in lopez. Court looks at whether a real case as passed by congress meets constitutional standards, these decisions do not mean that a law of that nature could not be passed
Facts: In 1984, Congress enacted legislation ordering the Secretary of Transportation to withhold five percent of federal highway funds from states that did not adopt a 21-year-old minimum drinking age. South Dakota, a state that permitted persons 19 years of age to purchase alcohol, challenged the law.
_South Dakota v. Dole (1986)
Issue:_Did Congress exceed its spending powers, or violate the Twenty-first Amendment, by passing legislation conditioning the award of federal highway funds on the states’ adoption of a uniform minimum drinking age?
Rule: Art. 1 Sec. 8 Clause 1
Holding: No, Not compelled and does have an interest. Congress can provide incentives to states and put conditions on them and as long as the states are not compelled then they are acceptable under the spending power. Power of congress to authorize expenditure of public moneys for public purposes is not limited by the direct grants of legislative power in the constitution (1) First limitation is that it must be in pursuit of the general welfare (2) Second that if there are conditions it must state them unambiguously and can not be coercive – the state must understand the consequences (3) Third they may be illegitimate if they are unrelated to the federal interest in particular national projects or programs – two part mini test (a) congruent (must be related to) (b) Proportionality (cannot take all the money away for refusing the new requirements) (4)Fourth cant require the state to violate a constitutional provision
_Facts: _The Archbishop of San Antonio sued local zoning authorities for violating his rights under the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), by denying him a permit to expand his church in Boerne, Texas. Boerne’s zoning authorities argued that the Archbishop’s church was located in a historic preservation district governed by an ordinance forbidding new construction, and that the RFRA was unconstitutional insofar as it sought to override this local preservation ordinance. On appeal from the Fifth Circuit’s reversal of a District Court’s finding against Archbishop Flores, the Court granted Boerne’s request for certiorari.
_City of Boerne v. Flores (1996)
Issue:_ Did Congress exceed its Fourteenth Amendment enforcement powers by enacting the RFRA which, in part, subjected local ordinances to federal regulation?
Rule: 14 amendment Section 5
Holding: Yes. While Congress may enact such legislation as the RFRA, in an attempt to prevent the abuse of religious freedoms, it may not determine the manner in which states enforce the substance of its legislative restrictions. Two kinds of congressional power (1)definitional - make a law that says whatever they want (2)remedial - make a law to fix a problem that already exists – general must be congruent and proportional to the offense. In this situation there has to be a preexisting offense because it is based on a remedial power
Facts:
Affordable Care Act (2011)
