04-1244 Scheidler v. NOW, Inc.

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The more restrictive reading of the statutory text—the one tying the prohibited violence to robbery or extortion—is correct. For one thing, it is the more natural reading. The text preceding the physical violence clause does not forbid obstructing, delaying, or affecting commerce; rather, it forbids obstructing, delaying, or affecting commerce “by robbery or extortion.” §1951(a) (emphasis added). This means that behavior that obstructs, delays, or affects commerce is a “violation” of the statute only if it also involves robbery or extortion (or related attempts or conspiracies). Consequently, the reference in the physical violence clause to actions or threats of violence “in furtherance of a plan or purpose to do anything in violation of this section” seems to mean acts or threats of violence in furtherance of a plan or purpose to engage in robbery or extortion, for that is the only kind of behavior that the section otherwise makes a violation. This restrictive reading is further supported by the fact that Congress often intends such statutory terms as “affect commerce” or “in commerce” to be read as terms of art connecting the congressional exercise of legislative authority with the constitutional provision (here, the Commerce Clause) granting that authority. See, e.g., Allied-Bruce Terminix Cos. v. Dobson, 513 U. S. 265, 273. Such jurisdictional language may limit, but it will not primarily define, the behavior that the statute calls a “violation” of federal law. Cf. Jones v. United States, 529 U. S. 848, 854. Moreover, the statute’s history supports the more restrictive reading: Both of the Hobbs Act’s predecessor statutes made clear that the physical violence they prohibited was not violence in furtherance of a plan to injure commerce, but violence in furtherance of a plan to injure commerce through coercion or extortion (1934 Act) or through extortion or robbery (1946 Act). The Hobbs Act’s legislative history contains nothing to the contrary. That the present statutory language is less clear than the 1946 version does not reflect a congressional effort to redefine the crime. To the contrary, Congress revised the Act’s language in 1948 as part of its general revision of the Criminal Code, which “was not intended to create new crimes but to recodify those then in existence.” Morissette v. United States, 342 U. S. 246, 269, n. 28. The Court will not presume the revision worked a change in the underlying substantive law absent a clearly expressed intent to do so. Keene Corp. v. United States, 508 U. S. 200, 209. Here there is no evidence of any such intent. Finally, respondents’ interpretation broadens the Hobbs Act’s scope well beyond what case law has assumed. It would federalize much ordinary criminal behavior, ranging from simple assault to murder, that typically is the subject of state, not federal, prosecution. Congress did not intend the Hobbs Act to have so broad a reach. See, e.g., NOW II, supra, at 405. Other Courts of Appeals have rejected respondents’ construction of the Act. And in 1994, Congress enacted the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, 18 U.S.C. §248(a)(3), which was aimed specifically at the type of activity at issue in this litigation, thereby suggesting that Congress did not believe that the Hobbs Act already addressed that activity.

91 Fed. Appx. 510, reversed and remanded.

Local effect:

The decision reverses a case form the Seventh Circuit.

Breyer, J.