BUL 2131 St. Petersburg College Gonzales v. Raich Case Essay

DO NOT PLAGIARIZE, USE YOUR OWN WORDS.

Summarizing : To summarize give the relevant facts. Assume no one knows anything about the case you are describing. Use your own words not the words of the case. Be sure to give the URL.Module

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How to Brief a Case

Text Book, Appendix A – How to Brief a Case

For this assignment, you are only to create the Factssection of the brief.

For this assignment first read the case carefully. In this assignment, you are to identify only the relevant facts. Do not restate all the facts, just choose those facts that explain what materially happened in the cases. What facts does the court need to make a decision? Use your own words and check your Turnitin Originality Report in case you need to resubmit before the due date.The case involves a situation where the plaintiff, (the person bringing the suit), is seeking declaratory and injunctive relief. This means that the plaintiff is asking the court to declare the rights of each party and stop the defendant from doing a certain action.

In the case of Gonzales, the facts are set out under the section entitled “OPINION Justice Stevens delivered the opinion of the Court.”. In this case, the plaintiffs are asking the court to declare what their rights are to be able to grow marijuana and to stop the federal government from prohibiting them from growing marijuana for medical purposes.

Do not complete the entire brief – take this step by step – Facts Only

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Minimum 200 words

(Excerpts from the opinion follow)
ALBERTO R. GONZALES, ATTORNEY GENERAL, et al., Petitioners v. ANGEL
McCLARY RAICH et al.
No. 03-1454
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
545 U.S. 1; 125 S. Ct. 2195; 162 L. Ed. 2d 1; 2005 U.S. LEXIS 4656; 73 U.S.L.W.
4407; 18 Fla. L. Weekly Fed. S 327
November 29, 2004, Argued
June 6, 2005, Decided
OPINION Justice Stevens delivered the opinion of the Court.
California is one of at least nine States that authorize the use of marijuana for
medicinal purposes. 1 The question presented in this case is whether the power
vested in Congress by Article I, § 8, of the Constitution “[t]o make all Laws which
shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution” its authority to “regulate
Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States” includes the power
to prohibit the local cultivation and use of marijuana in compliance with California
law.
California has been a pioneer in the regulation of marijuana. California voters passed
the Compassionate Use Act of 1996, which allowed seriously ill residents of the
state to have access to marijuana for medical purposes.
Respondents Angel Raich and Diane Monson are California residents who suffer
from a variety of serious medical conditions and have sought to avail themselves of
medical marijuana pursuant to the terms of the Compassionate Use Act. They are
being treated by licensed, board-certified family practitioners, who have concluded,
after prescribing a host of conventional medicines to treat respondents’ conditions
and to alleviate their associated symptoms, that marijuana is the only drug available
that provides effective treatment. Both women have been using marijuana as a
medication for several years pursuant to their doctors’ recommendation, and both
rely heavily on cannabis to function on a daily basis. Indeed, Raich’s physician
believes that forgoing cannabis treatments would certainly cause Raich excruciating
pain and could very well prove fatal.
Respondent Monson cultivates her own marijuana, and ingests the drug in a variety
of ways including smoking and using a vaporizer. Respondent Raich, by contrast, is
unable to cultivate her own, and thus relies on two caregivers, litigating as “John
Does,” to provide her with locally grown marijuana at no charge. These caregivers
also process the cannabis into hashish or keif, and Raich herself processes some of
the marijuana into oils, balms, and foods for consumption.
On August 15, 2002, county deputy sheriffs and agents from the federal Drug
Enforcement Administration (DEA) came to Monson’s home. After a thorough
investigation, the county officials concluded that her use of marijuana was entirely
lawful as a matter of California law. Nevertheless, after a 3-hour standoff, the federal
agents seized and destroyed all six of her cannabis plants.
Raich and Monson brought this suit against the Attorney General of the United
States and the head of the DEA seeking injunctive and declaratory relief prohibiting
the enforcement of the federal Controlled Substances Act (CSA) to the extent it
prevents them from possessing, obtaining, or manufacturing cannabis for their
personal medical use. In their complaint and supporting affidavits, Raich and
Monson described the severity of their afflictions, their repeatedly futile attempts to
obtain relief with conventional medications, and the opinions of their doctors
concerning their need to use marijuana.
The District Court denied respondents’ motion for a preliminary injunction A divided
panel of the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed and ordered the District
Court to enter a preliminary injunction. The United States appealed.
Justice Stevens’ Opinion
Respondents in this case do not dispute that passage of the CSA, as part of the
Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act, was well within Congress’
commerce power.. Nor do they contend that any provision or section of the CSA
amounts to an unconstitutional exercise of congressional authority. Rather,
respondents’ challenge is actually quite limited; they argue that the CSA’s categorical
prohibition of the manufacture and possession of marijuana as applied to the
intrastate manufacture and possession of marijuana for medical purposes pursuant to
California law exceeds Congress’ authority under the Commerce Clause.
[There are} three general categories of regulation in which Congress is authorized to
engage under its commerce power. First, Congress can regulate the channels of
interstate commerce. Second, Congress has authority to regulate and protect the
instrumentalities of interstate commerce and persons and things in interstate
commerce. Third, Congress has the power to regulate activities that substantially
affect interstate commerce. Only the third category is implicated in the case at hand.
Our case law firmly establishes Congress’ power to regulate purely local activities
that are part of an economic “class of activities” that have a substantial effect on
interstate commerce. As we stated in Wickard v Filburn “even if [the] 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.” We have never required Congress to legislate with scientific exactitude.
When Congress decides that the “‘total incidence'” of a practice poses a threat to a
national market, it may regulate the entire class.
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.
Here, Congress had a rational basis for concluding that leaving home-consumed
marijuana outside federal control would similarly affect price and market conditions.
The concern making it appropriate to include marijuana grown for home
consumption in the CSA is the likelihood that the high demand in the interstate
market will draw such marijuana into that market, The diversion of homegrown
marijuana tends to frustrate the federal interest in eliminating commercial
transactions in the interstate market in their entirety. In both cases, the regulation is
squarely within Congress’ commerce power because production of the commodity
meant for home consumption has a substantial effect on supply and demand in the
national market for that commodity.
In assessing the scope of Congress’ authority under the Commerce Clause , we stress
that the task before us is a modest one. We need not determine whether respondents’
activities, taken in the aggregate, substantially affect interstate commerce in fact, but
only whether a “rational basis” exists for so concluding.. Given the enforcement
difficulties that attend distinguishing between marijuana cultivated locally and
marijuana grown elsewhere, and concerns about diversion into illicit channels, we
have no difficulty concluding that Congress had a rational basis for believing that
failure to regulate the intrastate manufacture and possession of marijuana would
leave a gaping hole in the CSA. Thus, when it enacted comprehensive legislation to
regulate the interstate market in a fungible commodity, Congress was acting well
within its authority to “make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper” to
“regulate Commerce . . . among the several States.” That the regulation ensnares
some purely intrastate activity is of no moment. As we have done many times
before, we refuse to excise individual components of that larger scheme.
Reversed and remanded in favor of Attorney General Gonzales