Gonzales v raich supreme court decision

Case Analysis Of Gonzales V. Raich

Case 5-2 Gonzales v. Raich

Supreme Court of the United States 545 U.S. 1 (2005)

In 1996, California voters passed the Compassionate Use Act of 1996, which allowed seriously ill residents of the state to have access to marijuana for medical purposes. Angel Raich and Diane Monson are California residents who were using medical marijuana pursuant to their doctors’ recommendations for their serious medical conditions.

County deputy sheriffs and federal Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents investigated Raich’s and Monson’s use of medical marijuana. Although Raich and Monson were found to be in compliance with the state law, the federal agents seized and destroyed their cannabis plants.

Raich and Monson brought suit against the attorney general of the United States and the head of the DEA, seeking injunctive and declaratory relief prohibiting the enforcement of the federal Controlled Substances Act (CSA) to the extent it prevents them from possessing, obtaining, or manufacturing cannabis for their personal medical use. The district court denied the respondents’ motion for a preliminary injunction. A divided panel of the court of appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed and ordered the district court to enter a preliminary injunction. The United States appealed.

Justice Stevens

Respondents in this case do not dispute that passage of the CSA, as part of the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act, was well within Congress’ commerce power. Nor do they contend that any provision or section of the CSA amounts to an unconstitutional exercise of congressional authority. Rather, respondents’ challenge is actually quite limited; they argue that the CSA’s categorical prohibition of the manufacture and possession of marijuana as applied to the intrastate manufacture and possession of marijuana for medical purposes pursuant to California law exceeds Congress’ authority under the Commerce Clause.

[There are] three general categories of regulation in which Congress is authorized to engage under its commerce power. First, Congress can regulate the channels of interstate commerce. Second, Congress has authority to regulate and protect the instrumentalities of interstate commerce and persons or things in interstate commerce. Third, Congress has the power to regulate activities that substantially affect interstate commerce. Only the third category is implicated in the case at hand.

Our case law firmly establishes Congress’ power to regulate purely local activities that are part of an economic “class of activities” that have a substantial effect on interstate commerce. As we stated in Wickard v. Filburn, 317 U.S. 111 (1942), “even if appellee’s activity be local and though it may not be regarded as commerce, it may still, whatever its nature, be reached by Congress if it exerts a substantial economic effect on interstate commerce.” We have never required Congress to legislate with scientific exactitude. When Congress decides that the “total incidence” of a practice poses a threat to a national market, it may regulate the entire class.

Our decision in Wickard is of particular relevance. In Wickard, we upheld the application of regulations promulgated under the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938, which were designed to control the volume of wheat moving in interstate and foreign commerce in order to avoid surpluses and consequent abnormally low prices. The regulations established an allotment of 11.1 acres for Filburn’s 1941 wheat crop, but he sowed 23 acres, intending to use the excess by consuming it on his own farm. Filburn argued that even though we had sustained Congress’ power to regulate the production of goods for commerce, that power did not authorize “federal regulation [of] production not intended in any part for commerce but wholly for consumption on the farm.” Justice Jackson’s opinion for a unanimous Court rejected this submission. He wrote:

The effect of the statute before us is to restrict the amount which may be produced for market and the extent as well to which one may forestall resort to the market by producing to meet his own needs. That appellee’s own contribution to the demand for wheat may be trivial by itself is not enough to remove him from the scope of federal regulation where, as here, his contribution, taken together with that of many others similarly situated, is far from trivial.

Wickard thus establishes that Congress can regulate purely intrastate activity that is not itself “commercial,” in that it is not produced for sale, if it concludes that failure to regulate that class of activity would undercut the regulation of the interstate market in that commodity.

The similarities between this case and Wickard are striking. Like the farmer in Wickard, respondents are cultivating, for home consumption, a fungible commodity for which there is an established, albeit illegal, interstate market. Just as the Agricultural Adjustment Act was designed “to control the volume [of wheat] moving in interstate and foreign commerce in order to avoid surpluses . . .” and consequently control the market price, a primary purpose of the CSA is to control the supply and demand of controlled substances in both lawful and unlawful drug markets. In Wickard, we had no difficulty concluding that Congress had a rational basis for believing that, when viewed in the aggregate, leaving home-consumed wheat outside the regulatory scheme would have a substantial influence on price and market conditions. Here too, Congress had a rational basis for concluding that leaving home-consumed marijuana outside federal control would similarly affect price and market conditions.

More concretely, one concern prompting inclusion of wheat grown for home consumption in the 1938 Act was that rising market prices could draw such wheat into the interstate market, resulting in lower market prices. The parallel concern making it appropriate to include marijuana grown for home consumption in the CSA is the likelihood that the high demand in the interstate market will draw such marijuana into that market. While the diversion of homegrown wheat tended to frustrate the federal interest in stabilizing prices by regulating the volume of commercial transactions in the interstate market, the diversion of homegrown marijuana tends to frustrate the federal interest in eliminating commercial transactions in the interstate market in their entirety. In both cases, the regulation is squarely within Congress’ commerce power because production of the commodity meant for home consumption, be it wheat or marijuana, has a substantial effect on supply and demand in the national market for that commodity.

Nonetheless, respondents suggest that Wickard differs from this case in three respects: (1) the Agricultural Adjustment Act, unlike the CSA, exempted small farming operations; (2) Wickard involved a “quintessential economic activity”—a commercial farm—whereas respondents do not sell marijuana; and (3) the Wickard record made it clear that the aggregate production of wheat for use on farms had a significant impact on market prices. Those differences, though factually accurate, do not diminish the precedential force of this Court’s reasoning.

The fact that Wickard’s own impact on the market was “trivial by itself” was not a sufficient reason for removing him from the scope of federal regulation. That the Secretary of Agriculture elected to exempt even smaller farms from regulation does not speak to his power to regulate all those whose aggregated production was significant, nor did that fact play any role in the Court’s analysis. Moreover, even though Wickard was indeed a commercial farmer, the activity he was engaged in—the cultivation of wheat for home consumption—was not treated by the Court as part of his commercial farming operation.

In assessing the scope of Congress’ authority under the Commerce Clause, we stress that the task before us is a modest one. We need not determine whether respondents’ activities, taken in the aggregate, substantially affect interstate commerce in fact, but only whether a “rational basis” exists for so concluding. Given the enforcement difficulties that attend distinguishing between marijuana cultivated locally and marijuana grown elsewhere, and concerns about diversion into illicit channels, we have no difficulty concluding that Congress had a rational basis for believing that failure to regulate the intrastate manufacture and possession of marijuana would leave a gaping hole in the CSA. Thus, as in Wickard, when it enacted comprehensive legislation to regulate the interstate market in a fungible commodity, Congress was acting well within its authority to “make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper” to “regulate Commerce . . . among the several States.” That the regulation ensnares some purely intrastate activity is of no moment. As we have done many times before, we refuse to excise individual components of that larger scheme. *

* Gonzales v. Raich, Supreme Court of the United States 545 U.S. 1 (2005). https://www.law .cornell.edu/supct/html/03-1454.ZO.html.

Reversed and remanded in favor of Attorney General Gonzalez.

Critical Thinking About The Law

Analogies are a standard method for creating a link between the case at hand and legal precedent.

Wickard v. Filburn is a long-established precedent. The court’s reasoning in Case 5-2 is that the use of medical marijuana by the plaintiffs is sufficiently similar to the facts in Wickard to rely on this precedent.

1. What are the similarities between the case at hand and Wickard?

Clue: Try to make a large list of similarities. Later, after you have made a large list, think about the logic the analogy is trying to support. Eliminate those similarities that do not assist that logic because they are not relevant to an assessment of the quality of the analogy.

2. Are there significant differences that the Court ignores or downplays?

Clue: First think about the purpose this analogy is serving. Then think about the differences in the facts for this case and the facts for Wickard.

Although the current Supreme Court seems to prefer greater regulatory power for states, Gonzales v. Raich and another recent case stand as examples in which the Supreme Court upheld congressional acts on the basis of the Commerce Clause. In Pierce County v. Guillen, 11 the Supreme Court held that the Hazard Elimination Program was a valid exercise of congressional authority under the Commerce Clause. This program provided funding to state and local governments to improve conditions of some of their most unsafe roads. To receive federal funding, however, state and local governments were required to regularly acquire information about potential road hazards. The state and local governments were reluctant to avail themselves of the program for fear that the information they acquired to receive funding would be used against them in lawsuits based on negligence. To alleviate these fears, Congress amended the program, allowing state and local governments to conduct engineering surveys without publicly disseminating the acquired information, even for discovery purposes in trials.

11 537 U.S. 129 (2003).

Following his spouse’s death in an automobile accident, Ignacio Guillen sued Pierce County and sought information related to previous accidents at the intersection where his wife died. The county argued that such information was protected under the provisions of the Hazard Elimination Program. Reversing the appellate court’s holding that Congress exceeded its powers when amending the act, the Supreme Court concluded that the amended act was valid under the Commerce Clause. The Supreme Court reasoned that Congress had a significant interest in assisting local and state governments in improving safety in the channels of interstate commerce, the interstate highways. The Court validated Congress’s belief that state and local governments would be more likely to collect relevant and accurate information about potential road hazards if those governments would not be required to provide such information in discovery. Hence, the Supreme Court held that the amended act of Congress was valid on the basis of the Commerce Clause.

Despite the Court’s ruling in Pierce County v. Guillen, many Supreme Court commentators had thought that the Court’s turn toward a more restrictive interpretation of the Commerce Clause would lead the Court to rule that Congress cannot justify regulating states’ decisions regarding medical marijuana through the Commerce Clause. Instead, Justice Stevens distinguished Gonzales v. Raich from United States v. Lopez and Brzonkala v. Morrison, explaining that the federal regulations at issue in Lopez and Morrison were not related to economic activity, even understood broadly, and thus in both cases Congress had overstepped its bounds. Raich’s activities, however, did involve economic activity, even if it is the economic activity of an illegal, controlled substance.

The Commerce Clause as a Restriction on State Authority
Because the Commerce Clause grants authority to regulate commerce to the federal government, a conflict arises over the extent to which granting such authority to the federal government restricts the states’ authority to regulate commerce. The courts have attempted to resolve the conflict over the impact of the Commerce Clause on state regulation by distinguishing between regulations of commerce and regulations under the state police power. Police power means the residual powers retained by the state to enact legislation to safeguard the health and welfare of its citizenry. When the courts perceived state laws to be attempts to regulate interstate commerce, these laws would be struck down; however, when the courts found state laws to be based on the exercise of the state police power, the laws were upheld.