B. Factual BackgroundThe court concluded that this entirely local, entirely intrastate activity of growing and using the pot fell outside the federal government's authority to regulate or criminalize pursuant to its power to regulate interstate commerce. This case will be the talk of Constitutional Law classes all across the country in January. The Commerce Clause has been so expansively interpreted in such a long line of cases over so many decades that any opinion that perceives a limit on Congress' power to regulate commerce will be seen as an outlier, no matter how compelling the facts. Indeed, you can count on the fingers of one hand the number of cases (since 1937) in which the Supreme Court has ruled that Congress exceeded its powers under the Commerce Clause, and all of them have been decided in the last 10 years. The thinking was that a more conservative Supreme Court thought the activist Congress needed to have its wings clipped so that it wouldn't have a blank check to regulate any activity it wanted to touch, no matter how local and no matter how much it was a subject of traditional state concern.
Appellants Angel McClary Raich and Diane Monson (the “patient appellants”) are California citizens who currently use marijuana as a medical treatment. Appellant Raich has been diagnosed with more than ten serious medical conditions, including an inoperable brain tumor, life-threatening weight loss, a seizure disorder, nausea, and several chronic pain disorders. Appellant Monson suffers from severe chronic back pain and constant, painful muscle spasms. Her doctor states that these symptoms are caused by a degenerative disease of the spine. Raich has been using marijuana as a medication for over five years, every two waking hours of every day. Her doctor contends that Raich has tried essentially all other legal alternatives and all are either ineffective or result in intolerable side effects; her doctor has provided a list of thirty-five medications that fall into the latter category alone. Raich’s doctor states that foregoing marijuana treatment may be fatal. Monson has been using marijuana as a medication since 1999. Monson’s doctor also contends that alternative medications have been tried and are either ineffective or produce intolerable side effects. As the district court put it: “Traditional medicine has utterly failed these women . . . .”
Appellant Monson cultivates her own marijuana. Raich is unable to cultivate her own. Instead, her two caregivers, appellants John Doe Number One and John Doe Number Two, grow it for her. These caregivers provide Raich with her
marijuana free of charge. They have sued anonymously in order to protect Raich’s supply of medical marijuana. In growing marijuana for Raich, they allegedly use only soil, water, nutrients, growing equipment, supplies and lumber originating from or manufactured within California. Although these caregivers cultivate marijuana for Raich, she processes some of the marijuana into cannabis oils, balm, and foods.
On August 15, 2002, deputies from the Butte County Sheriff’s Department and agents from the Drug Enforcement Agency (“DEA”) came to Monson’s home. The sheriff’s deputies concluded that Monson’s use of marijuana was legal under the Compassionate Use Act. However, after a three-hour standoff involving the Butte County District Attorney and the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of California, the DEA agents seized and destroyed Monson’s six cannabis plants.
Now the worm has turned, and the liberal 9th Circuit (the most-reversed court of appeals in the federal system) has used this new view of the Commerce Clause to rule against John Ashcroft's Justice Department and uphold individual marijuana use in these cases. Stay tuned . . . I rather suspect the Department of Justice might want to run this one by SCOTUS. Meanwhile, news reports and commentary can be found on Google News.
No comments:
Post a Comment