imported post
The federal school zone act was enacted in 1990. In 1995 it was found unconstitutional in the 1995 SCOTUS opinion in Lopez. In 1996 Congress, in my opinion so much as contempted the SCOTUS decision by wordsmithing the GFSZ law but doing nothing to change its intent and message. Following are the opening paragraphs of the SCOTUS opinion.
U.S. Supreme Court
UNITED STATES v. LOPEZ, ___ U.S. ___ (1995) UNITED STATES v. LOPEZ, ___ U.S. ___ (1995)
UNITED STATES, PETITIONER v. ALFONSO LOPEZ, JR.
CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FIFTH CIRCUIT
No. 93-1260.
Argued November 8, 1994
Decided April 26, 1995
After respondent, then a 12th-grade student, carried a concealed handgun into his high school, he was charged with violating the Gun-Free School Zones Act of 1990, which forbids "any individual knowingly to possess a firearm at a place that [he] knows . . . is a school zone," 18 U.S.C. 922(q)(1)(A). The District Court denied his motion to dismiss the indictment, concluding that 922(q) is a constitutional exercise of Congress' power to regulate activities in and affecting commerce. In reversing, the Court of Appeals held that, in light of what it characterized as insufficient congressional findings and legislative history, 922(q) is invalid as beyond Congress' power under the Commerce Clause.
Held:
The Act exceeds Congress' Commerce Clause authority. First, although this Court has upheld a wide variety of congressional Acts regulating intrastate economic activity that substantially affected interstate commerce, the possession of a gun in a local school zone is in no sense an economic activity that might, through repetition elsewhere, have such a substantial effect on interstate commerce. Section 922(q) is a criminal statute that by its terms has nothing to do with "commerce" or any sort of economic enterprise, however broadly those terms are defined. Nor is it an essential part of a larger regulation of economic activity, in which the regulatory scheme could be undercut unless the intrastate activity were regulated. It cannot, therefore, be sustained under the Court's cases upholding regulations of activities that arise out of or are connected with a commercial transaction, which viewed in the aggregate, substantially affects interstate commerce.
CHIEF JUSTICE REHNQUIST delivered the opinion of the Court.
In the Gun-Free School Zones Act of 1990, Congress made it a federal offense "for any individual knowingly to possess a firearm at a place that the individual knows, or has reasonable cause to believe, is a school zone." 18 U.S.C. 922(q)(1)(A) (1988 ed., Supp. V). The Act neither regulates a commercial activity nor contains a requirement that the possession be connected in any way to interstate commerce. We hold that the Act exceeds the authority of Congress "[t]o regulate Commerce . . . among the several States . . . ." U.S. Const., Art. I, 8, cl. 3.
I believe the federal GFSZ act of 1996 will live only until another brave soul comes along to challenge it.