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Transcript

Facts

Conclusion

Respondents Angel Raich and Diane Monson are California residents who suffer from serious medical conditions and that marijuana is the only drug available that provides effective treatment. So both of them have been using marijuana as a medication for several years pursuant to their doctors’ recommendation, and both rely heavily on cannabis to function on a daily basis. Despite receiving approval from California state officials, federal agents seized and destroyed Raich’s marijuana plants.

The decision of the court of appeals is reversed.

Facts

  • In 1970, Congress enacted the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act to combat illegal drug use in the United States.
  • Title II of that Act, the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), categorized all controlled substances into five schedules and prevented them from being manufactured, distributed, dispensed and possessed in the United States.

Gonzales v. Raich

  • In 1996, California voters passed Proposition 215, no codified as the Compassionate Use Act of 1996. The proposition was designed to ensure that “seriously ill” residents of the State have access to marijuana for medical purposes.

545 US 1 (2005)

Analysis

Group 9

Issue

2. Congress had a rational basis for concluding that leaving home-consumed marijuana outside federal control would similarly affect price and market conditions.

May Congress regulate the use and production of homegrown marijuana?

  • 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.
  • Rational basis is all that is needed, not actual evidence of the effect.

Respondent's attempt to rely on Lopez and Morrison is incorrect, because the activities regulated by the CSA are quintessentially economic, since they are related to production.

Analysis

Therefore, the CSA is a valid exercise of Congress’s Commerce Clause power because Congress acted rationally in determining growing marijuana was an economic activity with a substantial effect on interstate commerce.

Holding / Rule of Law

Concurring

Yes, Congress has the power to prohibit the local cultivation and use of marijuana under the power of the Commerce Clause.

1. Wickard v. Filburn 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.

Scalia, J

Congress’s power to regulate activities having a “substantial effect” on interstate commerce is derived from the Commerce Clause and the Necessary and Proper Clause.

Dissenting

  • Wickard establishes that Congress can regulate purely intrastate activity that is not itself "commercial" (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.

O'Connor, J; Thomas, J; Chief J)

  • One of federalism's chief virtues is that allows states to serve as laboratories, and this is a prime example of that.
  • Decision allows Congress to regulate intrastate activity without check, so long as there is some implication by legislative design that regulating intrastate activity is essential to the interstate regulatory scheme.

Significance

  • This is inconsistent with Lopez, because the Court said Lopez's regulations were not commercial. Congress should have described the relevant crime as "transfer or possession of a firearm anywhere in the nation"--thus including commercial and noncommercial activity.
  • If the Court always defers to Congress in this way, little may be left to the notion of enumerated powers.

Gonzales v. Raich established Congressional power to regulate homegrown medical marijuana in a state where medical marijuana is legal under a state statute.

  • The Government has made no showing in fact that the possession and use of homegrown marijuana for medical purposes, in California or elsewhere, has a substantial effect on interstate commerce.
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