545
Vote: 6-3
In this case the Court
considers whether the power to regulate interstate commerce allows Congress to
prohibit individuals from cultivating small amount of marijuana for personal
medical use, notwithstanding a state law allowing it. Not only does the case
involve the scope of federal power over individuals, it has important
implications for the system of federalism.
Justice Stevens
delivered the opinion of the Court.
…
In 1996,
Respondents
Angel Raich and Diane Monson are
Respondent
Monson cultivates her own marijuana, and ingests the drug in a variety of ways
including smoking and using a vaporizer. Respondent Raich,
by contrast, is unable to cultivate her own, and thus relies on two caregivers,
litigating as “John Does,” to provide her with locally grown marijuana at no
charge. …
On August
15, 2002, county deputy sheriffs and agents from the federal Drug Enforcement
Administration (DEA) came to Monson’s home. After a thorough investigation, the
county officials concluded that her use of marijuana was entirely lawful as a
matter of
Respondents
thereafter brought this action against the Attorney General of the
The
District Court denied respondents’ motion for a preliminary injunction.
Although the court found that the federal enforcement interests “wane[d]” when
compared to the harm that
A divided
panel of the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed and ordered the
District Court to enter a preliminary injunction. The court found that
respondents had “demonstrated a strong likelihood of success on their
claim that, as applied to them, the CSA is an unconstitutional exercise of
Congress’ Commerce Clause authority.” The Court of Appeals distinguished prior
Circuit cases upholding the CSA in the face of Commerce Clause challenges by
focusing on what it deemed to be the “separate and distinct class of
activities” at issue in this case: “the intrastate, noncommercial
cultivation and possession of cannabis for personal medical purposes as
recommended by a patient’s physician pursuant to valid California state law.”
The court found the latter class of activities “different in kind from drug
trafficking” because interposing a physician’s recommendation raises different
health and safety concerns, and because “this limited use is clearly distinct
from the broader illicit drug market--as well as any broader commercial market
for medicinal marijuana--insofar as the medicinal marijuana at issue in this
case is not intended for, nor does it enter, the stream of commerce.”
The
majority placed heavy reliance on our decisions in
The
obvious importance of the case prompted our grant of certiorari. The case is
made difficult by respondents’ strong arguments that they will suffer
irreparable harm because, despite a congressional finding to the contrary,
marijuana does have valid therapeutic purposes. The question before us,
however, is not whether it is wise to enforce the statute in these
circumstances; rather, it is whether Congress’ power to regulate interstate
markets for medicinal substances encompasses the portions of those markets
that are supplied with drugs produced and consumed locally. Well-settled law
controls our answer. The CSA is a valid exercise of federal power, even as
applied to the troubling facts of this case. We accordingly vacate the judgment
of the Court of Appeals. …
In
enacting the CSA, Congress classified marijuana as a Schedule I drug. …
Schedule I drugs are categorized as such because of their high potential for
abuse, lack of any accepted medical use, and absence of any accepted safety for
use in medically supervised treatment. … By classifying marijuana as a Schedule
I drug, as opposed to listing it on a lesser schedule, the manufacture,
distribution, or possession of marijuana became a criminal offense, with the
sole exception being use of the drug as part of a Food and Drug Administration
pre-approved research study. …
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. …
Cases
decided during that “new era” [of Commerce Clause cases,] which now spans more
than a century, have identified 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,
“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. In this vein, we have reiterated that when “‘a general
regulatory statute bears a substantial relation to commerce, the de minimis character of individual instances arising under
that statute is of no consequence.’“
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. …
To
support their contrary submission, respondents rely heavily on two of our more
recent Commerce Clause cases. In their myopic focus, they overlook the larger
context of modern-era Commerce Clause jurisprudence preserved by those cases.
Moreover, even in the narrow prism of respondents’ creation, they read those
cases far too broadly.
Those two
cases, of course, are [
Unlike
those at issue in Lopez and Morrison, the activities regulated by
the CSA are quintessentially economic. … The CSA is a
statute that regulates the production, distribution, and consumption of
commodities for which there is an established, and lucrative, interstate
market. Prohibiting the intrastate possession or manufacture of an article of
commerce is a rational (and commonly utilized) means of regulating commerce in
that product. Such prohibitions include specific decisions requiring that a
drug be withdrawn from the market as a result of the failure to comply with
regulatory requirements as well as decisions excluding Schedule I drugs
entirely from the market. Because the CSA is a statute that directly regulates
economic, commercial activity, our opinion in Morrison casts no doubt on
its constitutionality.
The Court
of Appeals was able to conclude otherwise only by isolating a “separate and
distinct” class of activities that it held to be beyond the reach of federal
power, defined as “the intrastate, noncommercial cultivation, possession and
use of marijuana for personal medical purposes on the advice of a physician and
in accordance with state law.” The court characterized this class as “different
in kind from drug trafficking.” The differences between the members of a class
so defined and the principal traffickers in Schedule I substances might be sufficient
to justify a policy decision exempting the narrower class from the coverage of
the CSA. The question, however, is whether Congress’ contrary policy judgment, i.e.,
its decision to include this narrower “class of activities” within the larger
regulatory scheme, was constitutionally deficient. We have no difficulty
concluding that Congress acted rationally in determining that none of the
characteristics making up the purported class, whether viewed individually or
in the aggregate, compelled an exemption from the CSA; rather, the subdivided
class of activities defined by the Court of Appeals was an essential part
of the larger regulatory scheme. …
The
exemption for cultivation by patients and caregivers can only increase the
supply of marijuana in the
So, from
the “separate and distinct” class of activities identified by the Court of
Appeals (and adopted by the dissenters), we are left with “the intrastate,
noncommercial cultivation, possession and use of marijuana.” Thus the
case for the exemption comes down to the claim that a locally cultivated
product that is used domestically rather than sold on the open market is not
subject to federal regulation. Given the findings in the CSA and the
undisputed magnitude of the commercial market for marijuana, our decision[] in Wickard v. Filburn … foreclose[s] that claim. …
Justice Scalia, concurring in the judgment.
I
agree with the Court’s holding that the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) may
validly be applied to respondents’ cultivation, distribution, and possession of
marijuana for personal, medicinal use. …
Our cases show that the regulation of intrastate activities
may be necessary to and proper for the regulation of interstate commerce in two
general circumstances. Most
directly, the commerce power permits Congress not only to devise rules for the
governance of commerce between States but also to facilitate interstate
commerce by eliminating potential obstructions, and to restrict it by
eliminating potential stimulants. …
As
we implicitly acknowledged in Lopez, however, Congress’s authority to
enact laws necessary and proper for the regulation of interstate commerce is
not limited to laws directed against economic activities that have a
substantial effect on interstate commerce. Though the conduct in Lopez
was not economic, the Court nevertheless recognized that it could be regulated
as “an essential part of a larger regulation of economic activity, in which the
regulatory scheme could be undercut unless the intrastate activity
were regulated.” This statement referred to those cases permitting the
regulation of intrastate activities “which in a substantial way interfere with
or obstruct the exercise of the granted power.” …[W]here
Congress has the authority to enact a regulation of interstate commerce, “it
possesses every power needed to make that regulation effective.” …
… In the
CSA, Congress has undertaken to extinguish the interstate market in Schedule I
controlled substances, including marijuana. The Commerce Clause unquestionably
permits this. The power to regulate interstate commerce
“extends not only to those regulations which aid, foster and protect the
commerce, but embraces those which prohibit it.” To effectuate its
objective, Congress has prohibited almost all intrastate activities related to
Schedule I substances--both economic activities (manufacture, distribution,
possession with the intent to distribute) and noneconomic
activities (simple possession). That simple possession is a noneconomic
activity is immaterial to whether it can be prohibited as a necessary part of a
larger regulation. Rather, Congress’s authority to enact all of these prohibitions
of intrastate controlled-substance activities depends only upon whether they
are appropriate means of achieving the legitimate end of eradicating Schedule I
substances from interstate commerce.
By this
measure, I think the regulation must be sustained. Not only is it impossible to
distinguish “controlled substances manufactured and distributed intrastate”
from “controlled substances manufactured and distributed interstate,” but it
hardly makes sense to speak in such terms. Drugs like marijuana are
fungible commodities. As the Court explains, marijuana that is grown at home
and possessed for personal use is never more than an instant from the
interstate market--and this is so whether or not the possession is for
medicinal use or lawful use under the laws of a particular State. Congress need
not accept on faith that state law will be effective in maintaining a strict
division between a lawful market for “medical” marijuana and the more general
marijuana market. “To impose on [Congress] the necessity of resorting to means
which it cannot control, which another government may furnish or withhold,
would render its course precarious, the result of its measures uncertain, and
create a dependence on other governments, which might disappoint its most important
designs, and is incompatible with the language of the constitution.” …
Finally, neither respondents
nor the dissenters suggest any violation of state sovereignty of the sort that
would render this regulation “inappropriate”--except to argue that the CSA
regulates an area typically left to state regulation. That is not enough to
render federal regulation an inappropriate means. The Court has repeatedly
recognized that, if authorized by the commerce power, Congress may regulate
private endeavors “even when [that regulation] may pre-empt express state-law
determinations contrary to the result which has commended itself to the
collective wisdom of Congress.” … At bottom, respondents’ state-sovereignty
argument reduces to the contention that federal regulation of the activities
permitted by
I thus
agree with the Court that, however the class of regulated activities is
subdivided, Congress could reasonably conclude that its objective of
prohibiting marijuana from the interstate market “could be undercut” if those
activities were excepted from its general scheme of
regulation. That is sufficient to authorize the application of the CSA to
respondents.
Justice O’Connor, with
whom the Chief Justice and Justice Thomas
join…, dissenting.
We
enforce the “outer limits” of Congress’ Commerce Clause authority not for their
own sake, but to protect historic spheres of state sovereignty from excessive
federal encroachment and thereby to maintain the distribution of power
fundamental to our federalist system of government. One of federalism’s chief
virtues, of course, is that it promotes innovation by allowing for the
possibility that “a single courageous State may, if its citizens choose,
serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without
risk to the rest of the country.”
This case
exemplifies the role of States as laboratories. The States’ core police powers
have always included authority to define criminal law and to protect the
health, safety, and welfare of their citizens. Exercising those powers,
Our
decision [in Lopez] about whether gun possession in school zones substantially
affected interstate commerce turned on four considerations. First, we observed
that our “substantial effects” cases generally have upheld federal regulation
of economic activity that affected interstate commerce, but that § 922(q) was a
criminal statute having “nothing to do with ‘commerce’ or any sort of
economic enterprise.” … Second, we noted that the statute contained no express
jurisdictional requirement establishing its connection to interstate commerce.
Third, we found telling the absence of legislative findings about the regulated
conduct’s impact on interstate commerce. … Finally, we rejected as too
attenuated the Government’s argument that firearm possession in school
zones could result in violent crime which in turn could adversely affect the
national economy. The Constitution, we said, does not tolerate reasoning that
would “convert congressional authority under the Commerce Clause to a general
police power of the sort retained by the States.” Later in Morrison, we
relied on the same four considerations to hold that § 40302 of the Violence
Against Women Act of 1994 exceeded Congress’ authority under the Commerce Clause.
In my
view, the case before us is materially indistinguishable from Lopez and Morrison
when the same considerations are taken into account.
The
Court’s principal means of distinguishing Lopez from this case is to
observe that the Gun-Free School Zones Act of 1990 was a “brief, single-subject
statute,” whereas the CSA is “a lengthy and detailed statute creating a
comprehensive framework for regulating the production, distribution, and
possession of five classes of ‘controlled substances.’“ Thus, according to the
Court, it was possible in Lopez to evaluate in isolation the
constitutionality of criminalizing local activity (there gun possession in
school zones), whereas the local activity that the CSA targets (in this case
cultivation and possession of marijuana for personal medicinal use) cannot be
separated from the general drug control scheme of which it is a part. …
I cannot
agree that our decision in Lopez contemplated such evasive or overbroad
legislative strategies with approval. ... Lopez and Morrison did
not indicate that the constitutionality of federal regulation depends on
superficial and formalistic distinctions. ... If the Court always defers to
Congress as it does today, little may be left to the notion of enumerated
powers. …
Justice Thomas,
dissenting.
Respondents
Diane Monson and Angel Raich use marijuana that has
never been bought or sold, that has never crossed state lines, and that has had
no demonstrable effect on the national market for marijuana. If Congress can
regulate this under the Commerce Clause, then it can regulate virtually
anything--and the Federal Government is no longer one of limited and enumerated
powers.
Respondents’
local cultivation and consumption of marijuana is not “Commerce ... among the
several States.” By holding that Congress may regulate activity that is neither
interstate nor commerce under the Interstate Commerce Clause, the Court
abandons any attempt to enforce the Constitution’s limits on federal power. The
majority supports this conclusion by invoking, without explanation, the
Necessary and Proper Clause. Regulating respondents’ conduct, however, is not
“necessary and proper for carrying into Execution” Congress’ restrictions on
the interstate drug trade. Thus, neither the Commerce Clause nor the Necessary
and Proper Clause grants Congress the power to regulate respondents’ conduct. …
[N]either in enacting the CSA nor in defending its application
to respondents has the Government offered any obvious reason why banning
medical marijuana use is necessary to stem the tide of interstate drug
trafficking. Congress’ goal of curtailing the interstate drug trade would not
plainly be thwarted if it could not apply the CSA to patients like Monson and Raich. That is, unless Congress’ aim is really to exercise
police power of the sort reserved to the States in order to eliminate even the
intrastate possession and use of marijuana. …
Even
assuming the CSA’s ban on locally cultivated and consumed marijuana is
“necessary,” that does not mean it is also “proper.” The means selected by
Congress to regulate interstate commerce cannot be “prohibited” by, or
inconsistent with the “letter and spirit” of, the Constitution. …
Even if
Congress may regulate purely intrastate activity when essential to
exercising some enumerated power, Congress may not use its incidental
authority to subvert basic principles of federalism and dual sovereignty.
Here,
Congress has encroached on States’ traditional police powers to define the
criminal law and to protect the health, safety, and welfare of their citizens.
Further, the Government’s rationale--that it may regulate the production or
possession of any commodity for which there is an interstate market--threatens
to remove the remaining vestiges of States’ traditional police powers. This
would convert the Necessary and Proper Clause into precisely what Chief Justice
Marshall did not envision, a “pretext ... for the accomplishment of objects not
intrusted to the government.” …
The
majority prevents States like