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Gonzales v. Raich

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Gonzales v. Raich (previously Ashcroft v. Raich), 545 U.S. 1 (2005), was a case in which the United States Supreme Court ruled on June 5, 2005 that under the Commerce Clause of the United States Constitution which allows the United States Congress "To regulate Commerce ... among the several States," Congress may ban the use of marijuana even where states approve its use for medicinal purposes.

John Ashcroft is in the case's name because he was Attorney General when the case was filed. The case was renamed when Alberto Gonzales became Attorney General.

Contents

The case

The case dealt with the Controlled Substances Act and medical marijuana. The question presented to the Court was: Is the Controlled Substances Act a constitutional use of the Commerce Clause of the United States Constitution?

Background

California voters passed Proposition 215 of 1996, legalizing the medical use of marijuana. The federal government opposes all use of medical marijuana, which remains illegal under federal law.

The case of Raich and Monson against the government

Angel Raich of Oakland, California, Diane Monson of Oroville, California, and two anonymous caregivers sued the government on October 9, 2002 to stop the government from interfering with their right to medical marijuana.

The marijuana Angel Raich used was homegrown, and was therefore licit under California law, but not under federal law. Diane Monson grew her own in her garden. Agents of the federal Drug Enforcement Administration raided her land and seized and destroyed her marijuana crop in August 2002. Raich and Monson sued for injunctive and declaratory relief in October 2002, claiming that the Controlled Substances Act was not constitutional as applied to their conduct.

One of the enumerated limits on the U.S. Federal Government's power is the Commerce Clause of the Constitution, which grants the power to regulate "commerce," but only commerce that occurs "among the several States," with foreign countries, and "with the Indian tribes." Raich argued that her possession and consumption of medical marijuana was not commerce. Neither she nor Monson paid for their marijuana, and neither obtained it from another state. The soil, seeds, nutrients, and lumber used to grow the marijuana, the respondents pointed out, were obtained from California.

Angel Raich claimed she used marijuana to keep herself alive. She and her doctor claimed to have tried dozens of prescription medicines for her numerous medical conditions, and that she was allergic to most of them. Her doctor [declared under oath] that Raich's life was at stake if she could not continue to use marijuana. Diane Monson suffered from chronic pain due to a car accident a decade before the case. She used marijuana to relieve the pain and muscle spasms around her spine.

The government's case

The United States Federal law, via the Controlled Substances Act, does not recognize and opposes medical marijuana. They sent federal agents to break up California's medical marijuana co-ops and seize their assets. They believed federal law preempted that of California. Another argument was that, if a single exception was made to the Controlled Substances Act, it would become unenforceable in practice.

The United States has a federal structure, with power divided between the states and the federal government. Many expansions of federal power enacted during the first phase of the New Deal in the 1930s were struck down by the Supreme Court of the United States, until President Franklin Delano Roosevelt unsuccessfully tried to increase the number of judges on the Court to fifteen (the court packing scheme), and fill it with sympathetic judges. However, in what was called "the switch in time that saved nine," the Court reversed course and found reasons to uphold new expansions of federal power. Wickard v. Filburn was one of these cases, which ruled that federal crop price controls reached the wheat grown on a rural farm to be fed to the owners and their farm animals. The rationale was that a farmer's growing "his own wheat" is "commerce" because if he had not grown and consumed it, he would have had to buy it from someone. Hence, in the aggregate, if farmers were allowed to consume their own wheat it would affect the interstate market in wheat. This case marked what may be as the high water mark of the commerce power. For sixty years—until the 1995 decision in Lopez—the Supreme Court struck down no law as exceeding the power of Congress under the Commerce Clause. In Raich, the government contended that consuming one's locally grown marijuana for medical purposes affects the interstate market of marijuana, and hence that the federal government may regulate—and prohibit—such consumption.

Litigation

On December 16, 2003, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals granted a prelimary injunction to prevent the federal government from interfering with Raich and Monson. In their ruling, they declared: "We find that the appellants have demonstrated a strong likelihood of success on their claim that, as applied to them, the Controlled Substances Act is an unconstitutional exercise of Congress' Commerce Clause authority."

Result

Legal briefs were filed and oral argument occurred on November 29, 2004 ([transcript]). The 6-3 decision, written by Justice Stevens, was issued on June 6 2005 ([transcript]). Justice Scalia wrote a separate concurrence ([transcript]) that aimed to differentiate the decision from the controversial results of United States v. Lopez and United States v. Morrison.

Justice O'Connor, dissenting ([transcript]), began her opinion by citing United States v. Lopez, which she followed with a reference to Justice Louis Brandeis's dissenting opinion in New State Ice Co. v. Liebmann:

Federalism 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.”
O'Connor concluded:
Relying on Congress’ abstract assertions, the Court has endorsed making it a federal crime to grow small amounts of marijuana in one’s own home for one’s own medicinal use. This overreaching stifles an express choice by some States, concerned for the lives and liberties of their people, to regulate medical marijuana differently. If I were a California citizen, I would not have voted for the medical marijuana ballot initiative; if I were a California legislator I would not have supported the Compassionate Use Act. But whatever the wisdom of California’s experiment with medical marijuana, the federalism principles that have driven our Commerce Clause cases require that room for experiment be protected in this case.
Justice Thomas also wrote a separate dissent ([transcript]), stating in part:
In the early days of the Republic, it would have been unthinkable that Congress could prohibit the local cultivation, possession, and consumption of marijuana.
Both Raich and Monson have indicated their intention to continue using medical marijuana in spite of the ruling. Some activists have compared this decision to the Dred Scott case, with the implication that the ruling may have only a temporary impact leading to political reversal.

Two days after the ruling, the International Narcotics Control Board issued a statement indicating that the Board "welcomes the decision of the United States Supreme Court, made on 6 June, reaffirming that the cultivation and use of cannabis, even if it is for 'medical' use, should be prohibited." INCB President Hamid Ghodse noted, "Cannabis is classified under international conventions as a drug with a number of personal and public health problems," referring to the drug's Schedule IV status under the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs[link].

Aftermath

Not long after the decision in Raich, the Court vacated a lower court decision in United States v. Stewart and remanded it to the court of appeals for reconsideration in light of Raich. In Stewart, the Ninth Circuit had held that Congress lacked the Commerce Clause power to criminalize the possession of homemade machine guns.

See also

External links and references

 

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