Frank Konarski, dba FGPJ Apartments and Development, et al. v. City of Tucson, Arizona, et al.

Questions here primarily evolve from what this Court determined in 1942: Back then—and what became a foundation for legal guidance—it was determined that the U.S. Congress, under the Commerce Clause, could regulate even a small-time farmer's harvest of wheat for his personal use because such circumstances were legally assigned to be considered in the aggregate sense. Wickard v. Filburn, 317 U.S. 111 (1942). Under this legal wisdom—like farming considered in the aggregate— a single housing rental unit structure, considered in the aggregate of all housing rental units, would also come to fall within the federally protected domain of interstate commerce. As such, a street thug, like many before and after him under similar circumstances, was convicted and incarcerated in a federal prison for effectively interfering with interstate commerce by having used a Molotov cocktail to set a single housing rental structure on fire. United States v. Gomez, 87 F.3d 1093 (9th Cir. 1996); see also, e.g., Russell v. United States, 471 U.S. 858 (1985); United States v. McMasters, 90 F.3d 1394, 1398 (8th Cir. 1996) (upholding federal conviction for single rental unit arson). The Fifth Circuit, as with other circuits, has relied on criminal cases like Russell to instill—in civil cases—that a housing rental transaction "unquestionably' is an 'activity that affects commerce," and, thus, is a transaction that falls within the said federal domain to be subject to the Fair Housing Act (42 U.S. Code §3601, et seq.), among other acts of Congress, because of the