San Antonio, Texas March 10, 1992
Alfonso Lopez, Jr., a senior at Edison High School, brings a concealed .38 caliber revolver
into the school.
Although the gun is not loaded, he also brings bullets for it.
After receiving an anonymous tip about the gun and bullets, school authorities confront
Lopez about it, man.
Lopez admitted to having the gun and bullets, but claimed that he brought them to school
just to sell to someone.
It’s not like he was gonna, ya know, SHOOT anyone at school.
Like that ever happens, anyway amirite?
But yeah, it didn’t matter that Alfonso just brought the gun and bullets to SELL to
someone.
It was ILLEGAL to do that, and frankly…terrifying to know a student brought such a dangerous
weapon to school.
He was charged with breaking a Texas law that banned guns on school property.
However, the next day there was good news and bad news for Lopez.
The good news was that the charges against him were dropped.
The bad news was that the only reason why the charges were dropped was because now he
was charged for breaking a federal law, the Gun Free School Zones Act, a law that made
it a federal offense for anyone to bring a gun into a school zone.
In the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, Lopez’s lawyers argued
that the Gun Free School Zones Act was actually unconstitutional.
According to them, there was nothing in the Constitution about controlling what happened
at public schools.
Therefore, the Tenth Amendment applied.
However, the U.S. District court disagreed, ruling that the Gun Free School Zones Act
was a “constitutional exercise of Congress’ well defined power to regulate activities
in and affecting commerce, and the ‘business’ of elementary, middle and high schools…affects
interstate commerce.”
In other words, the U.S. District Court argued that the Commerce Clause of the Constitution
gave Congress the power to regulate guns in public schools, and their rationale was that,
since guns in schools led to gun violence, people might be reluctant to travel through
these areas from other states.
The district court added that the disruptions in schools caused by weapons being there resulted
in a less educated population, which could negatively affect commerce in the future.
Well, Lopez and his lawyers thought this was quite a reach, to say the least.
After Lopez was found guilty and sentenced to six months in prison, followed by two years
of probation, he appealed the case to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, arguing that
the Commerce Clause didn’t apply to guns in schools.
The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with Lopez and reversed his conviction.
After this, the federal government got the Supreme Court to weigh in, and it heard oral
arguments on November 8, 1994.
The lawyers who argued on behalf of the federal government had another…uh…UNIQUE…argument.
They argued that, because violent crime causes physical harm and creates monetary expenses,
this could directly lead to higher INSURANCE costs, which are spread throughout the entire
economy of the country.
Therefore, the Commerce Clause applied.
Hmmmmm.
And so, the Court had to consider whether or not the Gun Free School Zones Act was cool
according to the Commerce Clause.
Well spoiler alert.
It wasn’t.
On April 26, 1995, it announced it sided with Lopez, but this was another close one.
5-4.
Indeed, the Court generally thought the arguments by the lawyers representing the federal government
were a stretch, too.
It said that bringing a gun to a public school zone was not an economic activity and had
little effect on interstate commerce.
It declared the Gun Free School Zones Act unconstitutional, stating that the Commerce
Clause absolutely did not authorize it.
Chief Justice William Rehnquist wrote the majority opinion, identifying three categories
of economic activity could regulate under the Commerce Clause:
Any economic activity on channels (roads, waterways, and airways)
Any economic activity on instrumentalities (any kind of network that moves goods and/or
persons) Any economic activity “substantially”
affected by or related to interstate commerce.
Obviously, much of this was still up to much interpretation, and the dissenting justices
interpreted this case quite differently.
In his dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens argued that not only did the Commerce Clause
allow Congress to prohibit guns in school zones, but it could prohibit them anywhere.
Regardless, United States v. Lopez dramatically reduced the power of Congress with a more
narrow interpretation of the Commerce Clause while simultaneously increasing the strength
of the Tenth Amendment, and thus state legislatures.
The Court would further limit congressional powers with regards to the Commerce Clause
in the 2000 case United States v. Morrison.
Ever since United States v. Lopez, the Supreme Court has, more often than not, made federalism
great again by generally reducing the power of the federal government and strengthening
the power of state governments.
I’ll see you for the next Supreme Court case, jury!
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