Commerce Clause, Katzenbach v. McClung

[Emsworth]

The interstate commerce clause deals, as Philip pointed out, only with trade between the states. Even John Marshall conceded that a transaction taking place wholly within a state is not subject to congressional control under this clause. In Gibbons v. Ogden, he admitted, "It is not intended to say that these words [the commerce clause] comprehend that commerce which is completely internal, which is carried on between man and man in a State, or between different parts of the same State." The completely internal commerce of any state is entirely within that state's jurisdiction, not within the sphere of the federal government.

The equal protection argument is also highly absurd. The equal protection clause only binds state governments, not private individuals. As the Supreme Court held in the Civil Rights Cases, "It is state action of a particular character that is prohibited. Individual invasion of individual rights is not the subject-matter of the amendment ... It does not authorize congress to create a code of municipal law for the regulation of private rights; but to provide modes of redress against the operation of state laws."