For those who don't know;
An Ohio farmer, Roscoe Filburn, was growing wheat to feed animals on his own farm. The US government had established limits on wheat production, based on the acreage owned by a farmer, to stabilize wheat prices and supplies. Filburn grew more than was permitted and so was ordered to pay a penalty. In response, he said that because his wheat was not sold, it could not be regulated as commerce, let alone "interstate" commerce (described in the Constitution as "Commerce... among the several states").
The Supreme Court disagreed: "Whether the subject of the regulation in question was 'production', 'consumption', or 'marketing' is, therefore, not material for purposes of deciding the question of federal power before us.... But even if appellee's activity be local and though it may not be regarded as commerce, it may still, whatever its nature, be reached by Congress if it exerts a substantial economic effect on interstate commerce and this irrespective of whether such effect is what might at some earlier time have been defined as 'direct' or 'indirect.'"
The Supreme Court interpreted the Constitution's Commerce Clause, in Article I, Section 8, of the Constitution, which permits the US Congress "to regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes." The Court decided that Filburn's wheat-growing activities reduced the amount of wheat he would buy for animal feed on the open market, which is traded nationally, is thus interstate, and is therefore within the scope of the Commerce Clause.
The Supreme Court has since relied heavily on Wickard in upholding the power of the federal government to prosecute individuals who grow their own medicinal marijuana pursuant to state law. The Supreme Court would hold in Gonzalez v. Raich (2005) that like with the home-grown wheat at issue in Wickard, home-grown marijuana is a legitimate subject of federal regulation because it competes with marijuana that moves in interstate commerce. Wickard thus establishes that Congress can regulate purely intrastate activity that is not itself "commercial", in that it is not produced for sale, if it concludes that failure to regulate that class of activity would undercut the regulation of the interstate market in that commodity.
Wickard was central to arguments in National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius and Florida v. United States Department of Health and Human Services on the constitutionality of the individual mandate of the Affordable Care Act.
What do you think NSG? Should people be able to ... you know.
Grow wheat if they like? Weed? That kind of shit?
More seriously, should Wickard be repealed? The federal government has relied on this interpretation of the commerce clause (An interpretation that is a hell of a reach in many peoples opinion) in order to enact countless laws and have them upheld. Repealing Wickard would dramatically limit the ability of the central government to act and enforce regulations on intrastate activity.
Should it be done? Why or why not?
I see arguments on both sides of the aisle for doing so. Personally, I think that it should be repealed if only because of the wheat and marijuana examples, it seems to me a comical case of overreach.
