Interstate Commerce Clause? Sex Offender? Part I

That's definitely screwed up.

Destin, I have been doing some research on this also. If you want to exchange ideas let me know.

Thank you for sharing this @ The Constitution And The Law.

Chana
Have any idea where to look up that Interstate Commerce Cluase?

The Commerce Clause is a grant of power to Congress, not an express limitation on the power of the states to regulate the economy. At least four possible interpretations of the Commerce Clause have been proposed. First, it has been suggested that the Clause gives Congress the exclusive power to regulate commerce. Under this interpretation, states are divested of all power to regulate interstate commerce. Second, it has been suggested that the Clause gives Congress and the states concurrent power to regulate commerce. Under this view, state regulation of commerce is invalid only when it is preempted by federal law. Third, it has been suggested that the Clause assumes that Congress and the states each have their own mutually exclusive zones of regulatory power. Under this interpretation, it becomes the job of the courts to determine whether one sovereign has invaded the exclusive regulatory zone of the other. Finally, it has been suggested that the Clause by its own force divests states of the power to regulate commerce in certain ways, but the states and Congress retain concurrent power to regulate commerce in many other ways. This fourth interpretation, a complicated hybrid of two others, turns out to be the approach taken by the Court in its decisions interpreting the Commerce Clause.
Justice Curtis, in Cooley v Board of Wardens (1851) outlines the case for recognizing, as a constitutional matter, zones of exclusive federal authority over commerce and other zones of concurrent state and federal authority. Cooley, upholding a Pennsylvania law requiring that vessels entering Philadelphia harbor use of local pilots, applies a balancing test to judge the validity of the regulation.

Baldwin v G. A. F. Seelig (1935) invalidated a New York law prohibiting the sale in the state of milk bought outside of New York. New York argued the law was necessary to avoid price competition that would drive dairies into producing less wholesome milk. The Court, more realistically, saw the law as protectionist. Justice Cardozo wrote that when "a state tries to isolate itself economically" it must show an important interest for doing so and that it had no less discriminatory mean open for accomplishing its goal. Cardozo's test has become the standard test for evaluating state laws that discriminate against out-of-state commerce.

In another New York milk case, H. P. Hood and Sons v Dumond (1949), the Court applied the Baldwin test for protectionist laws to the state's denial of a license to operate a depot to collect milk for distribution to Boston. The Court saw the license denial as an effort by New York to horde a resource and thereby keep prices for its consumers low.

Edwards v California (1941) considered a challenge to a California law aimed at reducing the influx of dustbowl indigents to the state. The California statute made it a crime to bring into the state any indigent non-resident. Finding people in this case to be "articles of commerce," the majority found the statute to be a form of unconstitutional discrimination against out-of-state commerce. (Four concurring justices would have preferred to invalidate the law on 14th Amendment privileges and immunities grounds.)

In Philadelphia v New Jersey (1976), the Court struck down a New Jersey law that prohibited the importation of garbage into the state. Concluding that garbage was "commerce," the Court viewed the law--despite its environmental justification--as unconstitutional discrimination agains out-of-state commerce. The Court held that as long as reasonable, non-discriminatory alternatives exist that serve the states legitimate interests, they must be used instead of a discriminatory ban.

In Hughes v Oklahoma (1979), the Court invalidated an Oklahoma law prohibiting the interstate transportation of minnows taken from Oklahoma waters. The Court rejected Oklahoma's law that states "own" wildlife and therefore wildlife is not "an article of commerce." The law could be upheld only if the state could show it served a significant local interest that could not be furthered by a non-discriminatory law--this Oklahoma could not show.

Maine v Taylor (1986) is a rare example of a Supeme Court decision upholding a state statute that discriminated against out-of-state commerce. The Court accepted the trial court's findings that no non-discriminatory alternatives to Maine's ban on the importation of live baitfish adequately served the state's interest in preventing the introduction into Maine waters of new parasites and non-native fish species that might upset Maine's ecosystems.

Dean Milk Co. v Madison (1951) deals with discrimination against out-of-state (as well as much in-state) commerce not by a state, but by a city. At issue in the case was a Madison, Wisconsin ordinance that prohibited the sale of milk in Madison that was bottled more than five miles from the city's center. The ordinance was justified by Madison as necessary to facilitate inspection by city dairy inspectors. Finding the ordinance discriminatory and believing that reasonable non-discriminatory alternatives existed, the Supreme Court invalidated the ordinance despite the fact that a Milwaukee dairy was shut out of town just as much as one from Illinois.
In Hunt v Washington State Apple Ass'n (1977), the Court determined that a North Carolina law that allowed only one grade (the U. S. Dep't of Agriculture's grade) to be placed on containers of apples sold in the state. Washington's State Apple Ass'n contended that the law discriminated against Washington apples which are shipped in containers that include its own tougher state grades. Concluding that a discriminatory effect (not a discriminatory intent) is all that is necessary to trigger the Baldwin test of a significant state interest and no non-discriminatory alternatives available, the Court invalidated North Carolina's apple-grading law.

So. Pacific Co. v Arizona (1945) demonstrates that state laws might violate the Commerce Clause even when in-state and out-of-state commerce are treated equally. The case involved a challenge to Arizona's law prohibiting trains from crossing the state that contained more than 70 freight cars. Southern Pacific complained that the law required them to choose between disassembling at the Arizona border larger trains, making two runs across the state, and then reassembling the trains or avoiding Arizona altogether. Arizona argued the law was a safety measure designed to minimize the risk of "slack action" accidents to which longer trains are susceptible. The Court applied a test that balanced the state's safety interest against what it saw as the very substantial burden the law imposed on interstate commerce. The law was struck down. The same test was used in 1959 to strike down an Illinois law requiring trucks to have contoured rear fender mudguards rather than the straight mud guard flaps required by most other states (Bibb v Navajo Freight) and in 1978 to invalidate a Wisconsin law that limited truck length to 55 feet at a time when most long haul truck lines had gone to 65 foot trucks (Raymond Motor Transportation v Rice).
In United Haulers Assoc. v Oneida-Herkimer Solid Waste Management Authority (2007), the Court, by a vote of 6 to 3, upheld a New York law that required trash haulers in a region to deliver their waste to a county-owned waste treatment facility. Justice Roberts, writing for the Court, concluded that the law not discriminatory because it did not favor a private in-state trash facility, but rather a government-owned facility, and therein lies a constitutional difference. The burden of the "flow control" law, in the form of more expensive trash service, falls on in-state residents and could not be seen as an attempt to shift costs to out-of-state businesses. Because the law was deemed non-discriminatory, the Court applied its balancing test and found that the local benefits of the law (effective financing of waste disposal and increased recycling) outweighed the abstract harm on out-of-state businesses of removing waste processing services from the national marketplace.

Article 1, Section 8, Clause 3 of the United States Constitution, "The Congress shall have power . . . To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes"

Thank You for sharing on Pointmonster

Here's a 10 for you!! Thank you for posting this to the Gimme 10!!! Group

Wow, thanks Paula. I was planning on sending Destin some information tonight, but I think I am to tired for anything but the silliest things right now. I am going to read what you wrote tomorrow when my brain is fully engaged.

Destin, A two sites I have found are http://www.findlaw.com/ and http://www.law.cornell.edu/search/index.html I have to look on my old computer for other sites. I have no fully transferred my favorities over yet. I would like to find a book or site that helps with legal research online because I am more knowledgeable (years ago) in research in books. I find I have turned into a dinosaur!

Ed,
Better hold it tight, then. You might become a sex object. LOL

Paula T
Wow! You have been doing some research. I sure would like to have you involved in my case. I will try hard to win the lottery to afford you, in case your interested. Lacking the affordabliblty of having an attorney I filed my own suit in federal court, out of my own determination. As a victim, I saw what was going on with the manipulations of this, so called "real estate crisis,' and certain other matters involving our government and big businesses, and religion, and as xuch, I decided I am going to bring hellfire to rain down upon them all for their aggressive acts of deception.
Thanks for your input here.

I sincerely hope the officials who have the responsibility to monitor sex offenders who have been convicted of molesting other people, will do so. When the system fails, nice people are hurt. Children are hurt. It's not funny. Not at all.

Jan
The portals of reality seemed to be so seldom noticed or brought out into the open for all to know what is hidden within the domains of empowered clutches. I was a single 22 year old server at a local country club popular to the elite of Chattanooga, TN. One day the wife of a prominent - well established local judge -, either in his late 60's or early 70's introduced herself and her husband to me, and then the 16 or 17 yearl girl with them as, "the judges little misstress." I doubt that any of the frequent visiting members of that country club were unaware of this. I learned a lot about the ones who were politically responsible for the governing of this city at that county club, right on down to murder. Two years later I met that girl in person, in a private setting. She explained to my freind who introduced me to her on this second occasion that, in fact, the judge owned her from the time she was just a little girl, and her family. The judge was holding something on her father.
Would that help you to understand why I don't support my local police, that I know so much about? I hope so. And I hope you understand why I'm determined to bring them all down off of theri pedestals. And will succeed, one way or another.

You should know that those who MAKE the laws are ABOVE them, I think.

Yeah Gerald, and they need to be put way down below them. Way down where there's nothing but smolten flwoing like a river, hot as fire.