Supreme Court Rejects Federal School Gun Ban

A sharply divided Supreme Court on Wednesday struck down a 1990 federal law that outlaws possession of a gun within 1,000 feet of a school.

In a ruling with broad implications for constitutional law and with potentially far-reaching impact on domestic social policy, the high court ruled that the Gun-Free School Zones Act is an unconstitutional infringement on states’ rights to regulate purely local activity.

Local educators said the decision is unlikely to affect Orange County, where schools are already protected by state laws and district “zero tolerance” policies.

The 5-4 majority, led by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, asserted that Congress exceeded its authority by defining school safety as “economic activity” governed by the Constitution’s commerce clause and therefore subject to federal intervention.

The decision marks a turn from 60 years of court precedent that has put greater and greater power in the hands of Congress--power that some argue should have remained in the hands of the states. Since the New Deal era of the 1930s, the high court has allowed Congress to regulate virtually every aspect of American life because it was said to affect interstate commerce.

Wednesday’s decision comes against a backdrop of an intense partisan debate in Washington over federal versus states’ rights. The conservative majority on the court appeared to come down on the side of congressional Republicans who seek to return a vast array of powers to the states.

A narrow majority of the court is saying, in effect, “enough already” to decades of what they see as federal usurpation of state authority, said constitutional scholar Jesse H. Choper at UC Berkeley’s Boalt Hall law school.

Rehnquist, writing for the majority in the case (United States v. Lopez, 93-1260), said “possession of a gun in a local school zone is in no sense an economic activity that might, through repetition elsewhere, have . . . a substantial effect on interstate commerce.”

Upholding the 1990 gun law, Rehnquist argued, would “obliterate” all distinctions between what is local and what is national and allow federal authorities to meddle in all aspects of private life, including marriage and school curricula.

The justices in the majority noted that more than 40 states, including California, already limit possession of weapons on school grounds and that those local statutes remain perfectly valid.

The minority, led by first-year Justice Stephen G. Breyer, assailed the “extraordinary decision” of the court as a threat both to the nation’s schoolchildren and to its economic competitiveness.

Breyer noted in his lengthy dissent that 20% of urban high school students have been threatened with guns and that 4% of American high school students carry guns to school at least occasionally.

“Gun-related violence in and around schools is a commercial, as well as a human problem,” Breyer wrote, saying that students in violent schools learn poorly, perform badly in the work force and cause U.S. economic competitiveness to suffer. “Education, although far more than a matter of economics, has long been inextricably intertwined with the nation’s economy,” Breyer said.

Joining Rehnquist’s opinion were Justices Anthony M. Kennedy, Sandra Day O’Connor, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. Dissenting along with Breyer were Justices John Paul Stevens, David H. Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

The bill’s sponsor, Sen. Herbert Kohl (D-Wis.) said he was “astonished” by the high court action and vowed to reintroduce the guns-in-school bill in a form that will survive judicial scrutiny.

“I’m very disappointed that the Supreme Court has said that Congress cannot protect our children from guns,” Kohl said on the Senate floor. “This decision is a piece of judicial activism that ignores children’s safety.”

Some Orange County educators also expressed dismay.

“I wish somebody would take a stand,” said David Andrews, superintendent of the Tustin Unified School District. “What has to happen, some more Oklahoma Cities before people understand that we’ve got to take charge of our lives? Somebody’s got to step forward and do what’s right for the citizens of this country.”

Mac Bernd, superintendent of the Newport-Mesa Unified School District, agreed, adding that federal laws are sometimes more effective than state or local laws in deterring violent crimes on campuses.

“Sentences are very tough under the federal system,” said Bernd, who, as superintendent of another district in Little Rock, Ark., once was involved in prosecuting a drive-by shooter under the federal Gun-Free School Zones law.

“I was very glad that the law was in place,” Bernd said of the earlier experience. “What the federal law did was really let people know that there was the very real possibility of hard, long jail time for the possession or use of firearms around a school.”

California already has several laws in place establishing a 1,000-foot “gun-free zone” around campuses.

According to John F. Dean, county superintendent of schools, such laws are strictly enforced in Orange County where, he said, guns on campus are relatively rare.

“I get concerned when we talk about schools and guns in the same breath,” Dean said. “The districts have a one-mistake-and-you’re-gone kind of regulation. It’s made quite an impact on students, who feel that the safest place to be is on a school campus.”

The court indicated that it might accept a federal guns-in-school law if the legislation made explicit the connection between school safety and national economic goals.