Whether 18 U.S.C. §2422(b) exceeds Congress's commerce-clause-authority by reaching in-person enticement of a real or fictive minor that is arranged over the phone or on the internet

Questions Presented The government convicted Noel Macapagal of violating 18 U.S.C. §2422(b). As the government invoked it to convict Macapagal, this statute makes it a federal crime to use a facility or means of interstate commerce to entice a minor into illegal sexual activity. Applying §2422(b) to prosecute Macapagal—who texted, called, and messaged a fictive mother and, with her, set up a tryst with the fictive mother’s three fictive daughters—presents two questions that are worthy of this Court’s review. 1. The first question is whether §2422(b) picks up in-person enticement, so long as that in-person enticement is facilitated in any way by a phone or the internet or some other facility or means of commerce; or, instead, captures only remote, virtual, and online enticement that is conducted over the phone, or on the internet, or through some other means or facility of commerce. Stated differently, this question asks whether construing §2422(b) to reach in-person enticement of a real or fictive minor that is arranged over the phone or on the internet with an adult exceeds Congress’s commerce clause authority, because the statute would then reach nearly all instances of modern enticement, thereby impermissibly intruding on the States’ authority to police such local crime. 2. The second question this petition presents is whether §2422(b) broadly captures persuading an adult to allow access to a minor, while harboring an intent to entice the minor in person, and, thus, does not require the defendant to engage in any actual or attempted enticement of the minor, be it in person or online. Every 2 circuit that has reached this question has held that the statute reaches the use of, as they brand it, an ‘adult intermediary’ and, thus, entirely dispenses with any need to prove that the defendant interacted at all with a real or fictive minor. 3 Parties and Proceedings The caption lists all