Tuesday, October 15, 2013

prongs. 595 F.3d at 161. When a sex offender travels between states, he or she is a person in interstate commerce who travels via the use of the channels of interstate commerce. See id.  Pendleton claims that Shenandoah does not foreclose his Commerce Clause challenge because in Shenandoah we did not analyze the constitutionality of § 16913 separately from § 2250.  He contends that § 16913 is beyond the bounds of the Commerce Clause because it requires registration from all sex offenders, not just those who travel in interstate commerce. The government argues that § 16913 is a valid exercise of Congress‟s Commerce Clause power through the Necessary and Proper Clause.  Congress has the power “[t]o make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution” the powers that it has under, inter alia, the Commerce Clause. U.S. Const. art. I, § 8, cl. 18. Discussing the scope of the Necessary and Proper Clause many years ago, the Supreme Court wrote, “Let the end be legitimate, let it be within the scope of the constitution, and all means which are appropriate, which are plainly adapted to that end, which are not prohibited, but consist with the letter and spirit of the constitution, are constitutional.” M’Culloch v. Maryland, 17 U.S. 316, 421 (1819). Discussing that Clause more recently, the Supreme Court stated that “the relevant inquiry is simply „whether the means chosen are reasonably adapted to the attainment of a legitimate end under the commerce power‟ or under other powers that the Constitution grants Congress the authority to implement.” United States v. Comstock, 130 S. Ct. 1949, 1957 (2010) (quoting Raich, 545 U.S. at 37 (Scalia, J., concurring in the judgment)) (upholding through the Necessary and Proper Clause a “federal civil-commitment statute [that] authorizes the Department of Justice to detain a mentally ill, sexually dangerous federal prisoner beyond the date the prisoner would otherwise be released,” id. at 1954) (further internal quotation marks omitted); see also Raich, 545 U.S. at 35 (Scalia, J., concurring) (“Where necessary to make a regulation of interstate commerce effective, Congress may regulate even those intrastate activities that

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