Business 8th Edition by Marianne Jennings

Exercise 35

Economic Impact Is Not the Same as Commerce-. Violence Is Intrastate Activity
Facts
Christy Brzonkala (petitioner) enrolled at Virginia Polytechnic Institute (Virginia Tech) in the fall of 1994. In September of that year, Ms. Brzonkala met Antonio Morrison and James Crawford (respondents), who were both students at Virginia Tech and members of its varsity football team. Ms. Brzonkala alleges that, within 30 minutes of meeting Mr. Morrison and Mr. Crawford, they assaulted and repeatedly raped her. After the attack, Mr. Morrison allegedly told Ms. Brzonkala, "You better not have any... diseases." The court omitted portions of the quotes from the briefs in issuing its opinion, stating only that they "consist of boasting, debased remarks about what Morrison would do to women, vulgar remarks that cannot fail to shock and offend."
Ms. Brzonkala became severely emotionally disturbed and depressed. She sought assistance from a university psychiatrist, who prescribed antidepressant medication. Shortly after the rape, Ms. Brzonkala stopped attending classes and withdrew from the university.
In early 1995, Ms. Brzonkala filed a complaint under Virginia Tech's Sexual Assault Policy. During the school-conducted hearing on her complaint, Mr. Morrison admitted having sexual contact with her despite the fact that she had twice told him "no." After the hearing, Virginia Tech's Judicial Committee found insufficient evidence to punish Mr. Crawford, but found Mr. Morrison guilty of sexual assault and sentenced him to immediate suspension for two semesters.
Virginia Tech's dean of students upheld the judicial committee's sentence. However, in July 1995, Virginia Tech informed Ms. Brzonkala that Mr. Morrison intended to initiate a court challenge to his conviction under the Sexual Assault Policy. University officials told her that a second hearing would be necessary to remedy the school's error in prosecuting her complaint under that policy, which had not been widely circulated to students. The university conducted a second hearing under its Abusive Conduct Policy, which was in force prior to the dissemination of the Sexual Assault Policy
Following this second hearing, the Judicial Committee again found Mr. Morrison guilty and sentenced him to an identical two-semester suspension. This time, however, the description of Mr. Morrison's offense was changed from "sexual assault" to "using abusive language."
Mr. Morrison appealed his second conviction. Virginia Tech's senior vice president and provost set aside Mr. Morrison's punishment. She concluded that it was "excessive when compared with other cases where there has been a finding of violation of the Abusive Conduct Policy" Virginia Tech did not inform Ms. Brzonkala of this decision. After learning from a newspaper that Mr. Morrison would be returning to Virginia Tech for the fall 1995 semester, she dropped out of the university.
In December 1995, Ms. Brzonkala sued Mr. Morrison, Mr. Crawford, and Virginia Tech in Federal District Court. Her complaint alleged that Mr. Morrison's and Mr. Crawford's attack violated 42 U.S.C. § 13981, the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA). Mr. Morrison and Mr. Crawford moved to dismiss the complaint on the grounds that § 13981's civil remedy is unconstitutional.
The district court held that Congress lacked authority for the enactment of VAWA and dismissed the complaint against Mr. Morrison and Mr. Crawford. The court of appeals affirmed and Ms. Brzonkala appealed.
Judicial Opinion
REHNQUIST, Chief Justice
[We] consider the constitutionality of 42 U.S.C. § 13981, which provides a federal civil remedy for the victims of gender-motivated violence.
Section 13981 was part of the Violence Against Women Act of 1994. It states that "[a]ll persons within the United States shall have the right to be free from crimes of violence motivated by gender" 42 U.S.C. § 13981(b). To enforce that right, subsection (c) declares:
"A person (including a person who acts under color of any statute , ordinance , regulation , custom , or usage of any State) who commits a crime of violence motivated by gender and thus deprives another of the right declared in subsection (b) of this section shall be liable to the party injured , in an action for the recovery of compensatory and punitive damages , injunctive and declaratory relief , and such other relief as a court may deem appropriate. "
Since U. S. v Lopez , 514 U.S. 564 (1995) most recently canvassed and clarified our case law governing... Commerce Clause regulation, it provides the proper framework for conducting the required analysis of § 13981. In Lopez , we held that the Gun-Free School Zones Act of 1990,18 U.S.C. § 922(q)(l)(A), which made it a federal crime to knowingly possess a firearm in a school zone, exceeded Congress 7 authority under the Commerce Clause.
First, we observed that § 922(q) was "a criminal statute that by its terms has nothing to do with 'commerce' or any sort of economic enterprise, however broadly one might define those terms." Reviewing our case law, we noted that "we have upheld a wide variety of congressional Acts regulating intrastate economic activity where we have concluded that the activity substantially affected interstate commerce." Although we cited only a few examples, including Wickard v Filburn , 317 U.S. Ill, 63 S.Ct. 82, 87 L.Ed. 122 (1942); Katzenbach v McClung , 379 U.S. 294, 85 S.Ct. 377, 13 L.Ed.2d 290 (1964); and Heart of Atlanta Motel , we stated that the pattern of analysis is clear. "Where economic activity substantially affects interstate commerce, legislation regulating that activity will be sustained."
Both petitioners and Justice SOUTER's dissent downplay the role that the economic nature of the regulated activity plays in our Commerce Clause analysis. But a fair reading of Lopez shows that the noneconomic, criminal nature of the conduct at issue was central to our decision in that case. The possession of a gun in a local school zone is in no sense an economic activity that might, through repetition elsewhere, substantially affect any sort of interstate commerce. Lopez's review of Commerce Clause case law demonstrates that in those cases where we have sustained federal regulation of intrastate activity based upon the activity's substantial effects on interstate commerce, the activity in question has been some sort of economic endeavor.
[O]ur decision in Lopez rested in part on the fact that the link between gun possession and a substantial effect on interstate commerce was attenuated. The United States argued that the possession of guns may lead to violent crime, and that violent crime "can be expected to affect the functioning of the national economy...." The Government also argued that the presence of guns at schools poses a threat to the educational process, which in turn threatens to produce a less efficient and productive workforce, which will negatively affect national productivity and thus interstate commerce.
We rejected these "costs of crime" and "national productivity" arguments because they would permit Congress to "regulate not only all violent crime, but all activities that might lead to violent crime, regardless of how tenuously they relate to interstate commerce"
With these principles underlying our Commerce Clause jurisprudence as reference points, the proper resolution of the present cases is clear. Gender-motivated crimes of violence are not, in any sense of the phrase, economic activity.
In contrast with the lack of congressional findings that we faced in Lopez , § 13981 is supported by numerous findings regarding the serious impact that gender-motivated violence has on victims and their families. "'[S]imply because Congress may conclude that a particular activity substantially affects interstate commerce does not necessarily make it so.'" Rather, "'[w]hether particular operations affect interstate commerce sufficiently to come under the constitutional power of Congress to regulate them is ultimately a judicial rather than a legislative question, and can be settled finally only by this Court\"
Given these findings and petitioners' arguments, the concern that we expressed in Lopez that Congress might use the Commerce Clause to completely obliterate the Constitution's distinction between national and local authority seems well founded. The reasoning that petitioners advance seeks to follow the but-for causal chain from the initial occurrence of violent crime (the suppression of which has always been the prime object of the States' police power) to every attenuated effect upon interstate commerce. If accepted, petitioners' reasoning would allow Congress to regulate any crime as long as the nationwide, aggregated impact of that crime has substantial effects on employment, production, transit, or consumption. Indeed, if Congress may regulate gender-motivated violence, it would be able to regulate murder or any other type of violence since gender-motivated violence, as a subset of all violent crime, is certain to have lesser economic impacts than the larger class of which it is a part.
Petitioners' reasoning, moreover, will not limit Congress to regulating violence but may, as we suggested in Lopez , be applied equally as well to family law and other areas of traditional state regulation since the aggregate effect of marriage, divorce, and childrearing on the national economy is undoubtedly significant. Congress may have recognized this specter when it expressly precluded § 13981 from being used in the family law context. Under our written Constitution, however, the limitation of congressional authority is not solely a matter of legislative grace.
The Constitution requires a distinction between what is truly national and what is truly local. In recognizing this fact we preserve one of the few principles that has been consistent since the Clause was adopted.
The regulation and punishment of intrastate violence that is not directed at the instrumentalities, channels, or goods involved in interstate commerce has always been the province of the States.
Affirmed.
Dissenting Opinion
Justice SOUTER, with whom Justice STEVENS, Justice GINSBURG, and Justice BREYER join, dissenting Our cases, which remain at least nominally undisturbed, stand for the following propositions. Congress has the power to legislate with regard to activity that, in the aggregate, has a substantial effect on interstate commerce. The fact of such a substantial effect is not an issue for the courts in the first instance, but for the Congress, whose institutional capacity for gathering evidence and taking testimony far exceeds ours.
One obvious difference from United States v Lopez , 514 U.S. 549, 115 S.Ct. 1624, 131 L.Ed.2d 626 (1995), is the mountain of data assembled by Congress, here showing the effects of violence against women on interstate commerce. Passage of the Act in 1994 was preceded by four years of hearing, which included testimony from physicians and law professors; from survivors of rape and domestic violence; and from representatives of state law enforcement and private business. The record includes reports on gender bias from task forces in 21 States, and we have the benefit of specific factual findings in the eight separate Reports issued by Congress and its committees over the long course leading to enactment.
Indeed, the legislative record here is far more voluminous than the record compiled by Congress and found sufficient in two prior cases upholding Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 against Commerce Clause challenges. In Heart of Atlanta Motel Inc. v United States , 379 U.S. 241, 85 S.Ct. 348, 13 L.Ed.2d 258 (1964), and Katzenbach ? McClung , 379 U.S. 294, 85 S.Ct. 377, 13 L.Ed.2d 290 (1964), the Court referred to evidence showing the consequences of racial discrimination by motels and restaurants on interstate commerce. Congress had relied on compelling anecdotal reports that individual instances of segregation cost thousands to millions of dollars. Congress also had evidence that the average black family spent substantially less than the average white family in the same income range on public accommodations, and that discrimination accounted for much of the difference.
All of this convinces me that today's ebb of the commerce power rests on error, and at the same time leads me to doubt that the majority's view will prove to be enduring law.
What does VAWA do?