Comment by jdmichal
7 years ago
Interstate commerce has been interpreted very broadly... So broadly that consuming things you grew yourself is under subject of interstate commerce.
7 years ago
Interstate commerce has been interpreted very broadly... So broadly that consuming things you grew yourself is under subject of interstate commerce.
Even before that, there was a case where the federal government had limited the amount of wheat a farm could grow (to control prices), and came after a farmer who exceeded those limits for the sake of feeding his own livestock. This is, to the best of my knowledge, the earliest supreme court case where purely personal use counted as "interstate commerce".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn
Wickard's use was not purely personal. He grew more wheat than he used, and he sold that excess on the interstate market (or, from a different viewpoint: he sold wheat up to the allowable limit and gave the rest to his livestock). This directly impacted the interstate commerce of wheat, because growing his own wheat meant there was less demand for wheat from other farmers. Scaled up to an entire nation, this would have rendered the wheat control law toothless. Generally, this law has been upheld consistently in this context, though SCOTUS has struck down cases where a good was tangentially related to Congress but the targeted act/good was not actually a commercial transaction (or the avoidance of a commercial transaction, as in Wickard).
As I recall, the argument in the decision, however, was specifically that self-production for personal consumption affects the market (because you're not buying the product that you're producing).
Following that logic, Congress can regulate breathing, so long as there's a market for air.
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