Does the Hobbs Act Forbids Violent Conduct Unrelated to Extortion or Robbery?

Scheidler v. National Organization for Women, Inc.

In this case the Court must determine whether a group of activists who tried to disrupt activities at a health care clinic through violence (among other things) has violated the Hobbs Act. The Court previously ruled that the statute requires no economic motive, and that the ‘extortion’ definition necessarily includes improper “obtaining of property from another,” and having decided that a woman’s right to seek medical services or the right of the doctors to provide such a service could not count as property for the purposes of this statute, the Court mandated that the extortion charges be dismissed. Therefore, in this case, the Court must determine “whether the Hobbs act forbids violent conduct unrelated to extortion or robbery.”

The Hobbs act states that “[w]hoever in any way or degree obstructs, delays, or affects commerce or the movement of any article or commodity in commerce, by robbery or extortion or attempts or conspired to do so, or commits or threatens physical violence to any person or property in furtherance of a plan or purpose to do anything in violation of this section” has committed a crime. The question then turns on whether the Hobbs act makes it illegal to commit physical violence in order to simply ‘obstruct, delay, or affect commerce,’ or whether the group must have attempted to do so by robbery or extortion before it has violated this law.

The Court holds that the proper reading of the law requires that the physical violence be in furtherance of “robbery or extortion.” The Court reasons that this reading is more natural, it accords with the fact that Congress generally intends terms such as ‘affect[ing] commerce’ to be read as terms of art (referring to its powers under the commerce clause), the statute’s precursor made the requirement “crystal clear,” the act’s history contains nothing to the contrary, the act was amended during a general revision of the criminal code solely in order to consolidate it, and because an alternate reading would drastically broaden its scope. Additionally, congressional action has indicated that Congress did not believe the Hobbs act to cover the type of action at issue here.

Acknowledging the argument that “because the definitions of robbery or extortion … already encompass robbery or extortion that takes place through acts of violence” the words would be superfluous, the Court notes that petitioner found a small amount of additional work for those words, in the form of a hypothetical mobster who doe violence against a business which does not comply with his demand of payment on threat of violence.

All things considered, it seems likely that the Court reformulated the question, since such a simple question seems unlikely to have made it to the Supreme Court. And as you can see by the headline “Supreme Court Backs Abortion Protesters in Unanimous Ruling,” the media has, as usual, distorted beyond all recognition the question that the Court addressed.