editorial comment The drug constitutional exception, yet again. In the meanwhile, in Canada, the government is selling pot for medical purposes. Of course, with legal eagles like Clarence Thomas and Scalia (in his case, mostly a legal duck).....

The effort by advocates of the medical use of marijuana to link their cause to the Supreme Court's federalism revolution appeared headed for failure at the court on Monday.

During a lively argument, the justices expressed little inclination to view drug policy as a states' rights issue by which California and other states that have adopted "compassionate use" marijuana measures could displace federal regulation of homegrown marijuana distributed to patients without charge and without crossing state lines.

The closely watched case, which drew a crowd to the court, is an appeal by the Bush administration of a ruling last December by the federal appeals court in California that the federal Controlled Substances Act was "likely unconstitutional" as applied to two women who used marijuana under their doctors' care within the terms of Proposition 215, California's Compassionate Use Act, adopted by the voters in 1996.

Nine other states have adopted similar measures that permit people with chronic pain or illnesses like cancer and AIDS to use marijuana under a doctor's supervision.

By a 2-to-1 vote, a panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit issued an injunction barring federal agents from seizing the women's marijuana supplies. One patient, Diana Monson, grows her own marijuana and uses it to ease severe back spasms. The other, Angel McClary Raich, who has a brain tumor and other ailments, is too sick to cultivate her own marijuana and receives it without charge from two anonymous people. The two women sued for an injunction after federal agents arrived at Ms. Monson's home in Butte County and, after a three-hour standoff with local law enforcement agents, seized and destroyed her six marijuana plants.

The Ninth Circuit panel held that under the Supreme Court's recent federalism precedents, the noncommercial intrastate activity in which the women were engaged did not fall within Congress's constitutional authority to regulate interstate commerce.

But illegal drugs are fungible and exist within a national market, Paul D. Clement, the acting solicitor general, told the Supreme Court in arguing the administration's appeal, Ashcroft v. Raich, No. 03-1454. "What we're talking about here is the possession, manufacture and distribution of a valuable commodity for which there is, unfortunately, a ready market," he said.

Mr. Clement asserted that Supreme Court precedents dating to the New Deal made it clear that "the relevant focal point is not the individual plaintiff's activities" but rather the impact on the economy of an entire category of activity, taken as a whole, that Congress has chosen to regulate.

In fact, much of the debate in the courtroom on Monday centered on one particular precedent, Wickard v. Filburn, a decision from 1942 that upheld Congress's effort to support wheat prices by controlling wheat production. The court held that even the wheat that a farmer cultivated for home consumption could be regulated under the Agricultural Adjustment Act's quota system on the theory that all wheat production took place within a national market. That decision is regarded as one of the most far-reaching extensions of Congressional power that the Supreme Court has ever upheld.

Randy E. Barnett, a Boston University Law School professor arguing on behalf of the two women, told the justices on Monday that if they accepted the administration's argument in this case, "then Ashcroft v. Raich will replace Wickard v. Filburn as the most far-reaching example" of Congress's power over interstate commerce. Prohibition of "a class of activity that is noneconomic and wholly intrastate" was not essential to the government's "regulatory regime," he said, adding: "There is no interstate connection whatsoever."

But the justices whom Mr. Barnett needed to persuade, those who have questioned federal authority in recent cases, were skeptical. "It looks like Wickard to me," Justice Antonin Scalia told him, adding: "I always used to laugh at Wickard, but that's what Wickard says." He continued: "Why is this not economic activity? This marijuana that's grown is like wheat. Since it's grown, it doesn't have to be bought elsewhere."

Mr. Barnett said that relatively few people would meet the medical criteria for legal marijuana use, and that any impact on the overall market for marijuana would therefore be "trivial." The administration, by contrast, has predicted that 100,000 Californians will avail themselves of the statute if the court upholds the Ninth Circuit's ruling.

Justice David H. Souter asked Mr. Barnett for the population of California. The law professor shrugged. "Thirty-four million," Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, a former resident of Sacramento, interjected.

In that case, Justice Souter continued, the government's estimate of 100,000 was "not implausible" and Mr. Barnett's prediction of a "trivial" effect "seems to me insupportable." Justice Souter said the circumstances of the two plaintiffs were "not a realistic premise on which to base constitutional law." His comment suggested that the marijuana advocates' litigation strategy of telling their story through two sympathetic female plaintiffs, especially Ms. Raich, whose physical suffering is evident in her wraith-like features and whose doctor says she would probably die without access to marijuana, might have backfired.

Justice Stephen G. Breyer told Mr. Barnett that his clients should ask the Food and Drug Administration to reclassify marijuana as appropriate for medical use; a refusal could then be the basis for a lawsuit charging the agency with abusing its discretion. Such a lawsuit would be "the obvious way to get what they want," Justice Breyer said, adding, "I guess medicine by regulation is better than medicine by referendum."

Mr. Clement's argument for the federal government did not go unchallenged. In decisions over the last few years invalidating federal laws dealing with gun possession near schools and with violence against women, the court has found that the activity Congress sought to regulate was insufficiently economic in nature to fall within the power to regulate interstate commerce. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who voted with the majority in those cases, told Mr. Clement that the precedents gave her "some concerns" about applying the Controlled Substances Act to the marijuana in this case.

In response, Mr. Clement said that in contrast to the national market in illicit drugs, the activities Congress addressed in those cases were essentially noneconomic. "This case is on the constitutional side of the line," he said.

Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, who has been under treatment for thyroid cancer since mid-October, was not in court on Monday. Justice John Paul Stevens, presiding in his absence, announced that the chief justice would take part in the case by reading the briefs and the argument transcript.

In other action on Monday, the court refused without comment to hear an appeal by the City of Albuquerque from a ruling that struck down campaign spending limits for candidates for local office - $174,720 for mayor and $17,059 for the City Council.

The Supreme Court ruled in 1976, in the landmark campaign finance decision in Buckley v. Valeo, that election expenditures were protected by the First Amendment and, unlike contributions, could not be limited. On that basis, the federal appeals court in Denver ruled in April of this year that the Albuquerque limits were unconstitutional. The National Voting Rights Institute, a Boston group that advocates stricter campaign finance limits, brought the appeal in anticipation that the justices might be persuaded to revisit the 1976 precedent. The case was City of Albuquerque v. Homans, No. 04-413.

back | to top | full article >>