Wickard v. Filburn

The Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938 limited the area that farmers could devote to wheat production. Its stated purpose was to stabilize the price of wheat in the national market by controlling the amount of wheat produced. It was motivated by a belief by Congress that great international fluctuations in the supply and the demand for wheat were leading to wide swings in the price of wheat, which were deemed to be harmful to the U.S. agricultural economy. The Supreme Court's decision states that the parties had stipulated as to the economic conditions leading to passage of the legislation: Roscoe Filburn was a farmer in what is now suburban Dayton, Ohio. He admitted producing wheat in excess of the amount permitted. He maintained, however, that the excess wheat was produced for his private consumption on his own farm. Since it never entered commerce at all, much less interstate commerce, he argued that it was not a proper subject of federal regulation under the Commerce Clause. In July 1940, pursuant to the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) of 1938, Filburn's 1941 allotment was established at and a normal yield of 20.1 bushels of wheat per acre (). Filburn was given notice of the allotment in July 1940, before the fall planting of his 1941 crop of wheat, and again in July 1941, before it was harvested. Despite the notices, Filburn planted and harvested 239 more bushels () than was allowed from his of excess area. The Federal District Court ruled in favor of Filburn. The Act required an affirmative vote of farmers by plebiscite to implement the quota. Much of the District Court decision related to the way in which the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture had campaigned for passage: the District Court had held that the Secretary's comments were improper. The government then appealed to the Supreme Court, which called the District Court's holding (against the campaign methods that led to passage of the quota by farmers) a "manifest error". The Court then went on to uphold the Act under the Interstate Commerce Clause. By the time that the case reached the high court, eight out of the nine justices had been appointed by President Franklin Roosevelt, the architect of the New Deal legislation. In addition, the case was heard during wartime, shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor galvanized the United States to enter the Second World War. The decision supported the President by holding that the Constitution allowed the federal government to regulate economic activity that was only indirectly related to interstate commerce. == Decision ==

The Act's intended rationale was to stabilize the price of wheat on the national market. The federal government has the power to regulate interstate commerce by the Commerce Clause of the Constitution. In this decision, the Court unanimously reasoned that the power to regulate the price at which commerce occurs was inherent in the power to regulate commerce. Filburn argued that since the excess wheat that he produced was intended solely for home consumption, his wheat production could not be regulated through the Interstate Commerce Clause. The Supreme Court rejected the argument and reasoned that if Filburn had not produced his own wheat, he would have bought wheat on the open market. That effect on interstate commerce, the Court reasoned, may not be substantial from the actions of Filburn alone, but the cumulative actions of thousands of other farmers just like Filburn would certainly make the effect become substantial. Therefore, Congress could regulate wholly intrastate, non-commercial activity if such activity, viewed in the aggregate, would have a substantial effect on interstate commerce, even if the individual effects are trivial. Some of the parties' argument had focused on prior decisions, especially those relating to the Dormant Commerce Clause, in which the Court had tried to focus on whether a commercial activity was local or not. Justice Robert H. Jackson's decision rejected that approach as too formulaic: The issue was not how one characterized the activity as local. Rather, it was whether the activity "exerts a substantial economic effect on interstate commerce": The regulation of local production of wheat was rationally related to Congress's goal: to stabilize prices by limiting the total supply of wheat produced and consumed. It was clear, the Court held, ==Aftermath==

Wickard marked the beginning of the Supreme Court's total deference to the claims of the U.S. Congress to Commerce Clause powers until the 1990s. The Court's own decision, however, emphasizes the role of the democratic electoral process in confining the abuse of the power of Congress: "At the beginning Chief Justice Marshall described the Federal commerce power with a breadth never yet exceeded. He made emphatic the embracing and penetrating nature of this power by warning that effective restraints on its exercise must proceed from political rather than from judicial processes." Critics have noted that under Wickard there is "no distinction between 'interstate' and 'intrastate' commerce to place any limits on Congress' authority under the Commerce Clause", and that it allows regulation of activity that is generally not considered commerce. According to Earl M. Maltz, Wickard and other New Deal decisions gave Congress "the authority to regulate private economic activity in a manner near limitless in its purview." That remained the case until United States v. Lopez (1995), which was the first decision in nearly six decades to invalidate a federal statute on the grounds that it exceeded the power of the Congress under the Commerce Clause. The opinion described Wickard as "perhaps the most far reaching example of Commerce Clause authority over intrastate commerce" and judged that it "greatly expanded the authority of Congress beyond what is defined in the Constitution under that Clause." In Lopez, the Court held that while Congress had broad lawmaking authority under the Commerce Clause, the power was limited and did not extend so far from "commerce" as to authorize the regulation of the carrying of handguns, especially when there was no evidence that carrying them affected the economy on a massive scale. (In a later case, United States v. Morrison, the Court ruled in 2000 that Congress could not make such laws even when there was evidence of aggregate effect.) 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 Gonzales 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: In 2012, 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, with both supporters and opponents of the mandate claiming that Wickard supported their positions. ==See also==