Allen

At around 10:30 p.m. on July 29, 2000, Spring Ramirez, a Hispanic woman, Jason Clark, an African American man, and Pat Tellez, a Hispanic man, were socializing at Pioneer Park, a local park in Billings, Montana, when approximately nine white supremacists who were “patrolling” the park for racial minorities and Jews, surrounded them wielding weapons, berated them with racial epithets, and forced them out of the park for no reason other than their race. A federal grand jury indicted the defendants in this case — Sean Allen (“Allen”), Eric Dixon (“Dixon”), Ryan Flaherty (“Flaherty”), Michael Flom (“Flom”), Jason Potter (“Potter”), and Jeremiah Skidmore (“Skidmore”) — with violating 18 U.S.C. §§ 241 and 245(b)(2)(B), statutes that protect against the interference with federally protected rights on the basis of race and religion. The defendants appeal their convictions and sentences.

The principal issues on appeal are whether Pioneer Park is a place of “public accommodation” such that the defendants properly were convicted under § 241 and whether § 245(b)(2)(B) was validly enacted pursuant to Congress’s Commerce Clause and Thirteenth Amendment powers. These are issues that we…