Filed: Mar. 03, 1997
Latest Update: Mar. 02, 2020
Summary: Opinions of the United 1997 Decisions States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit 3-3-1997 United States v. Parker Precedential or Non-Precedential: Docket 95-201 Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.law.villanova.edu/thirdcircuit_1997 Recommended Citation "United States v. Parker" (1997). 1997 Decisions. Paper 53. http://digitalcommons.law.villanova.edu/thirdcircuit_1997/53 This decision is brought to you for free and open access by the Opinions of the United States Cour
Summary: Opinions of the United 1997 Decisions States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit 3-3-1997 United States v. Parker Precedential or Non-Precedential: Docket 95-201 Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.law.villanova.edu/thirdcircuit_1997 Recommended Citation "United States v. Parker" (1997). 1997 Decisions. Paper 53. http://digitalcommons.law.villanova.edu/thirdcircuit_1997/53 This decision is brought to you for free and open access by the Opinions of the United States Court..
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Opinions of the United
1997 Decisions States Court of Appeals
for the Third Circuit
3-3-1997
United States v. Parker
Precedential or Non-Precedential:
Docket 95-201
Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.law.villanova.edu/thirdcircuit_1997
Recommended Citation
"United States v. Parker" (1997). 1997 Decisions. Paper 53.
http://digitalcommons.law.villanova.edu/thirdcircuit_1997/53
This decision is brought to you for free and open access by the Opinions of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit at Villanova
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UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT
___________
No. 95-2018
___________
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Appellant
vs.
STEVEN PAUL PARKER
___________
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania
(D.C. Crim. No. 95-cr-00352)
___________
Argued
February 6, 1997
Before: STAPLETON and MANSMANN, Circuit Judges
and RESTANI, Judge.*
(Filed March 7, 1997)
___________
Michael R. Stiles
United States Attorney
Walter S. Batty, Jr.
Assistant United States Attorney
Chief of Appeals
Linda Dale Hoffa
Assistant United States Attorney
Robert A. Zauzmer (Argued)
Assistant United States Attorney
Office of United States Attorney
615 Chestnut Street
Philadelphia, PA 19106
Counsel for Appellant
Steven A. Feldman, Esquire (Argued)
Feldman & Feldman
1200 Veterans Memorial Highway
Hauppauge, NY 11788
Counsel for Appellee
1
* Honorable Jane A. Restani of the United States Court of
International Trade, sitting by designation.
___________
OPINION OF THE COURT
__________
MANSMANN, Circuit Judge.
This appeal from the dismissal of a criminal
information for failure to pay past-due child support presents a
question of first impression for us. We must determine whether
enactment of the Child Support Recovery Act of 1992, 18 U.S.C. §
228 (1995) ("The Act") was within the power granted to Congress
under Article 1, Section 8, Clause 3 of the Constitution.
Because we are convinced that the Act was the product of a lawful
exercise of congressional power under the Commerce Clause and
does not transgress the Tenth Amendment, we find that the
district court erred in holding the Act unconstitutional. We
will, therefore, reverse the order of the district court.
I.
On June 27, 1995, the United States Attorney for the
Eastern District of Pennsylvania filed a criminal information
alleging that Steven Paul Parker, a Florida resident, willfully
failed to pay a past-due child support obligation to his two
children in Pennsylvania in violation of the Child Support
Recovery Act of 1992, 18 U.S.C. § 228.1
1. The Act provides in part, as follows:
(a) Offense -- Whoever willfully fails to pay a past due support
obligation with respect to a child who resides in
2
On September 14, 1995, Parker moved to dismiss the
information, alleging that the Act is constitutionally infirm in
that it: (1) falls outside the limits of the power granted to
Congress under the terms of the Commerce Clause; and (2)
impermissibly interferes with the states' ability to regulate
child support and criminal law, thereby undermining the doctrine
of federalism and violating the Tenth Amendment. In an opinion
and order entered on October 30, 1995, the district court agreed
(..continued)
another state shall be punished as provided in
subsection (b).
(b) Punishment -- The punishment for an offense under this
section is --
(1) in the case of a first offense under this section, a fine
under this title, imprisonment for not more than 6
months, or both; and
(2) in any other case, a fine under this title, imprisonment for
not more than 2 years, or both.
(c) Restitution -- Upon a conviction under this section, the
court shall order restitution . . . in an amount equal
to the past due support obligation as it exists at the
time of sentencing.
(d) Definitions -- As used in this section --
(1) The term "past due support obligation" means any amount --
(A) determined under a court order or an order of an
administrative process pursuant to the law of a
State to be due from a person for the support and
maintenance of a child or of a child and the
parent with whom the child is living; and
(B) that has remained unpaid for a period longer than one
year, or is greater than $5,000.
28 U.S.C. § 228.
3
with Parker's arguments and dismissed the information. This
timely appeal followed.
We have jurisdiction pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 3731. Our
review of the district court's determination that the Act is
unconstitutional is plenary. United States v. Rybar, 103 F.3d
273 (3d Cir. 1996).
II.
Section 8 of Article I of the Constitution of the
United States provides that "The Congress shall have power . . .
[t]o regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the
several States, and with the Indian Tribes. . . ." The scope of
congressional power under this section has, until recently, been
interpreted to be virtually limitless. The Commerce Clause
landscape changed, however, with the Supreme Court's decision in
United States v. Lopez, ___ U.S. ___, 115 S. Ct. 1624 (1995).
There, the Court for the first time in nearly sixty years
invalidated a statute as beyond the scope of the Commerce Clause.
This apparent change in course has resulted in reexamination of
the Commerce Clause in a variety of contexts, as litigants
attempt to persuade the courts that Lopez has breathed new life
into statutory challenges that would, in other times, have been
rejected summarily.
In Lopez, the Court considered the constitutionality of
the Gun Free School Zones Act of 1990. This Act made it a
4
federal offense "for any individual knowingly to possess a
firearm at a place that the individual knows, or has reasonable
cause to believe, is a school zone." 18 U.S.C. § 922(q)(1)(A).
Evaluating the constitutionality of the statute, the Court
established that there are "three broad categories of activity
that Congress may regulate under its commerce power." 115 S. Ct.
at 1629. Congress is authorized to "regulate the use of the
channels of interstate commerce", "regulate and protect the
instrumentalities of interstate commerce," and "regulate . . .
those activities that substantially affect interstate commerce."
Id.
Because the Gun Free School Zone Act did not involve
"channels" or "instrumentalities" of interstate commerce, the
Court focused exclusively upon whether the regulated activity
substantially affected interstate commerce. The Court concluded
that it did not, writing that the statute "by its terms has
nothing to do with `commerce' or any sort of economic enterprise,
however broadly one might define those terms."
Id. at 1630. The
Court also found it significant that the statute did not contain
a jurisdictional element establishing a connection to interstate
commerce and that "[neither] the statute nor its legislative
history contained express congressional findings regarding the
effects upon interstate commerce of gun possession in a school
zone."
Id. at 1631.
5
Relying primarily on Lopez, the district court held the
Child Support Recovery Act unconstitutional, rejecting the
government's argument that the Act regulates an activity that
substantially affects interstate commerce and comprises a use of
the channels of interstate commerce. Specifically the court
concluded that a willful failure to pay a court-ordered sum "has
simply nothing to do with commerce in the context of the limited
power given to the federal government and withheld from the
states in the Commerce Clause." United States v. Parker, 911 F.
Supp. 830, 834 (E.D. Pa. 1995). The court also held that the Act
did not regulate use of the channels of interstate commerce in
that it did not apply to "the shipping of goods or the movement
of persons in interstate commerce." Id. at 842. While we
recognize that the Supreme Court's decision in Lopez establishes
that there is, indeed, an outer limit to congressional authority
under the Commerce Clause, we do not agree with the district
court that enactment of the Child Support Recovery Act lies
beyond that limit.
In United States v. Bishop, 66 F.3d 569, 577 (3d Cir.
1995), a post-Lopez decision, we defined our mandate in cases
challenging congressional authority under the Commerce Clause as
follows: "Our job . . . is not to second-guess the legislative
judgment of Congress that [the regulated activity] substantially
affects interstate commerce, but rather to ensure that Congress
had a rational basis for that conclusion." We clarified that the
6
requisite rational basis may be supported by an Act's legislative
history and by the interstate elements of a crime. We also
adopted a broad definition of commerce, rejecting the notion that
the Supreme Court in Lopez created a bright line rule
establishing that unless an activity is commercial or economic it
is beyond the reach of Congress under the Commerce Clause. Even
"local activities may become the subject of national legislation
when they are found to be part of a national problem with a
substantial impact upon interstate commerce." Id. at 584.
In light of both the decision in Lopez and our own
precedent, we are convinced that the Child Support Recovery Act
falls within the scope of congressional authority under the
Commerce Clause as a valid regulation of activity having a
substantial effect upon interstate commerce. In so holding we
align with our sister courts of appeals which have evaluated and
rejected constitutional challenges to the Act. See United States
v. Hampshire, 95 F.3d 787 (10th Cir. 1996); United States v.
Mussari,
95 F.3d 999 (9th Cir. 1996); and United States v. Sage,
92 F.3d 101 (2d Cir. 1996).2 We find the reasoning articulated
2. A majority of the district courts outside the Second,
Ninth, and Tenth Circuits which have considered challenges to the
Child Support Recovery Act have upheld the Act's
constitutionality. See United States v. Johnson, 940 F. Supp 911
(E.D. Va. 1996); United States v. Sims,
936 F. Supp. 817 (N.D.
Okla. 1996); United States v. Lewis,
936 F. Supp. 1093 (D. R.I.
1996); United States v. Ganapowski,
930 F. Supp. 1076 (M.D. Pa.
1996); United States v. Kegel,
916 F. Supp. 1233 (M.D. Fla.
1996); United States v. Bongiorno, Crim. No. 94-10178-REK,
1996
WL 208508 (D. Mass. Jan. 25, 1996); United States v. Hopper,
899
F. Supp. 389 (S.D. Ind. 1995); United States v. Murphy,
893 F.
7
in these decisions to be persuasive and adopt it here.
Accordingly our analysis is brief.
As we noted in Bishop, "we . . . must give substantial
deference to a Congressional determination that it had the power
to enact particular legislation." 66 F.3d at 576. Several
factors convince us that the Child Support Recovery Act falls
within the line drawn by the Supreme Court in Lopez. First, by
its terms, the Act is confined to interstate transactions; it
addresses the obligation of one parent to make payments in
interstate commerce for a child living in a different state.
These payments will normally move in interstate commerce by mail,
by wire, or by electronic transfer.
The activity regulated by the Act falls within the
broad definition of commerce which we adopted in Bishop. Failure
to make required payments gives rise to a debt which implicates
economic activity. This is an instance where "local activities .
. . are . . . part of a national problem with a substantial
impact upon interstate commerce." Id. at 584. It is significant
that the legislative history underlying the Act establishes that
state efforts have been inadequate to ensure that payments owed
are actually made and that, as a result, annual obligations
covered by the Act total billions of dollars. Finally, unlike
the statute the Court reviewed in Lopez, the Child Support
(..continued)
Supp. 614 (W.D. Va. 1995). But see United States v. Bailey,
902
F. Supp. 727 (W.D. Tex. 1995) (holding Act unconstitutional).
8
Recovery Act involves an unbroken chain of interstate events
which begins when one parent crosses state lines and ends with
interstate collection efforts.
III.
We also reject Parker's argument that the Child Support
Recovery Act undermines the doctrine of federalism and violates
the Tenth Amendment. In light of our holding that the Act is the
product of a legitimate exercise of congressional authority under
the Commerce Clause, this argument fails. "If Congress acts
under one of its enumerated powers -- here its power under the
Commerce Clause -- there can be no violation of the Tenth
Amendment." United States v. Mussari, 95 F.3d at 791. The Act
does not "threaten[] the existence or significance of the states
or interfere[] with the existence of their powers." United
States v.
Sage, 92 F.3d at 106. "All the Act does is enable the
United States to help [the states] do what [they] could not do on
[their] own, namely enforce [the] obligation to send money from
one state to another."
Id. at 105.
IV.
Because we are convinced that the Child Support
Recovery Act was enacted pursuant to the authority granted to
Congress under Article 1, Section 8, Clause 3 of the Constitution
9
and does not violate the terms of the Tenth Amendment, we will
reverse the order of the district court.
10
_________________________
TO THE CLERK:
Please file the foregoing opinion.
_____________________________
Circuit Judge
11
