Wickard campers

A legitimate end, the exercise of the granted power of Congress to regulate interstate commerce. 47 Id. (quoting United States v. Darby, 312 U.S. 100, 118 (1941) (citing United States v. Wrightwood Dairy Co., 315 U.S. 110, 119 (1942) (Congress’s power under the Commerce Clause “extends to those intrastate activities which in a substantial way interfere with or obstruct the exercise of the granted power.”)). Subsequently, in the landmark case of Wickard v. Filburn, the Supreme Court interpreted the Commerce Clause to permit Congress to regulate the production and consumption of homegrown wheat—an intrastate, non-economic endeavor. Id. at 556 (citing Wickard, 317 U.S. at 128–29. The Court observed, consistent with its holdings in Darby, Jones, and Wrightwood: Even if [the wheat farmer’s] 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, and this irrespective of whether such effect is what might at some earlier time have been defined as “direct” or “indirect.” Id. (quoting Wickard, 317 U.S. at 125). The Supreme Court stressed that even though a single wheat farmer, growing wheat for himself, may have a “trivial” impact on the market for wheat, that reality alone was not “‘enough to remove him from the scope of federal regulation where . . . his contribution, taken together with that of many others similarly situated, is far from trivial.’” Id. (quoting Wickard, 317 U.S. at 127–28). These cases,

Supp. 3d at 1285. This is especially true when such regulations are generally entrusted to the States. See CTS Corp. v. Dynamics Corp. of Am., 481 U.S. 69, 89 (1987) (“No principle of corporation law and practice is more firmly established than a State’s authority to regulate domestic corporations.”). Even when measured against Wickard, “the most far-reaching example of Commerce Clause authority over 52 interstate activity,” the CTA fails. See Lopez, 514 U.S. at 560. There is no fungible good at issue in the CTA. See 31 U.S.C. § 5336. And unlike Wickard, the CTA does not aim to regulate some issue of supply and demand. Compare id. with Wickard, 317 U.S. at 127–28. The CTA regulates reporting companies, simply because they are registered entities, and compels the disclosure of information for a law enforcement purpose. See 31 U.S.C. § 5336. No such regulation has been sustained under the Commerce Clause. The Court sees no reason to expand centuries of precedent such that this case should yield a different result.7 Upholding the CTA would require the Court to rubber-stamp what appears to be a substantial expansion of commerce power. This, the Court will not do. The Necessary and Proper Clause Having established that the Commerce Clause does not justify the CTA, the Court turns to the final arrow in the Government’s quiver: the Necessary and Proper Clause—its “last, best hope.” See Printz v. United States, 521 U.S. 898, 923 (1997). If the Necessary and Proper Clause does not authorize the

Of government and cannot extend its reach to embrace activities that “would effectually obliterate the distinction between what is national and what is local and create a completely centralized government.” Lopez, 514 U.S. at 557 (internal quotations omitted). Against this backdrop, the first question is whether the activity of “anonymous corporate existence and operation” constitutes an economic activity. Unlike possession of a firearm in a school-zone, Lopez, 514 U.S. at 561, or gender motivated violence, Morrison, 529 U.S. at 614, the anonymous existence and operation of corporations appears to have at least something to do with commerce. But not to the same extent as Wickard and Raich, both of which involved fungible commodities and actual markets for that good. See Wickard, 317 U.S. at 129; Raich, 545 U.S. at 19. Nonetheless, it is rational for Congress to believe that registered entities, in their natural state of anonymous existence, and whatever operations they may carry out, would substantially impact interstate commerce. See Raich, 545 U.S. at 22; Lopez, 514 U.S. at 557. But, when considered in light of our dual system of government, Congress’s commerce power cannot reach this far. If the Court were to sanction such an extension of legislative power today, then there is no telling how Congress would control companies tomorrow. The fact that a company is a company does not knight Congress with some supreme power to regulate them in all aspects—especially through the CTA, which does not facially regulate commerce. See NSBU v. Yellen, 721 F.