[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.][You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]Sorry for the long post but it is very important to read and understand what is going on in this article because this decision will be quoted and referred to fo many many years to come! Take time to read it because it explains in plain language what happened with the health care law and a federal judge!!! This judge actually gets it and explains it based on the principles the founding fathers used when forming our country!!!
Today’s
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] ruling that the individual mandate is unconstitutional is by far the
best court opinion on this issue so far. Judge Roger Vinson provides a
thorough and impressive analysis of the federal government’s arguments
claiming that the mandate is authorized by the Commerce Clause and the
Necessary and Proper Clause, and explains the flaws in each. He had
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So far, all three federal courts that have considered the tax argument
have rejected it, instead ruling (in my view correctly) that the mandate
is a penalty.This is perhaps the most important of all the
anti-mandate lawsuits because the plaintiffs include 26 state
governments and the National Federation of Independent Business.One
of the best parts of today’s opinion is Judge Vinson’s critique of the
federal government’s argument that the mandate is constitutional under
the Commerce Clause because the Clause gives it the power to regulate
“economic decisions”:<blockquote>The problem with this legal
rationale, however, is it would essentially have unlimited application.
There is quite literally no decision that, in the natural course of
events, does not have an economic impact of some sort. The decisions of
whether and when (or not) to buy a house, a car, a television, a dinner,
or even a morning cup of coffee also have a financial impact that —
when aggregated with similar economic decisions — affect the price of
that particular product or service and have a substantial effect on
interstate commerce. To be sure, it is not difficult to identify an
economic decision that has a cumulatively substantial effect on
interstate commerce; rather, the difficult task is to find a decision
that does not....The important distinction is that “economic
decisions” are a much broader and far-reaching category than are
“activities that substantially affect interstate commerce” [which
Supreme Court precedent allows Congress to regulate]. While the latter
necessarily encompasses the first, the reverse is not true. “Economic”
cannot be equated to “commerce.” And “decisions” cannot be equated to
“activities.” Every person throughout the course of his or her life
makes hundreds or even thousands of life decisions that involve the same
general sort of thought process that the defendants maintain is
“economic activity.” There will be no stopping point if that should be
deemed the equivalent of activity for Commerce Clause purposes.</blockquote>Judge
Vinson has a similarly compelling answer to the government’s claim that
choosing not to purchase health insurance is an “economic activity”
because everyone participates in the health care market at some point:<blockquote>[T]here
are lots of markets — especially if defined broadly enough — that
people cannot “opt out” of. For example, everyone must participate in
the food market. Instead of attempting to control wheat supply by
regulating the acreage and amount of wheat a farmer could grow as in
Wickard, under this logic, Congress could more directly raise too low
wheat prices merely by increasing demand through mandating that every
adult purchase and consume wheat bread daily, rationalized on the
grounds that because everyone must participate in the market for food,
non-consumers of wheat bread adversely affect prices in the wheat
market. Or, as was discussed during oral argument, Congress could
require that people buy and consume broccoli at regular intervals, not
only because the required purchases will positively impact interstate
commerce, but also because people who eat healthier tend to be
healthier, and are thus more productive and put less of a strain on the
health care system. Similarly, because virtually no one can be divorced
from the transportation market, Congress could require that everyone
above a certain income threshold buy a General Motors automobile — now
partially government-owned — because those who do not buy GM cars (or
those who buy foreign cars) are adversely impacting commerce and a
taxpayer-subsidized business....</blockquote>As Vinson explains,
both the “economic decisions” argument and the “health care is special”
argument ultimately amount to giving Congress the power to mandate
virtually anything, and therefore conflict with the text of the
Constitution and Supreme Court precedent. I addressed both arguments in
more detail
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Judge Vinson also notes that the scenarios he raises are not merely a
“parade of horribles,” but have a realistic basis, a point that I
discussed in
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.].Turning
to the Necessary and Proper Clause, Judge Vinson concedes that the
individual mandate is “necessary” under existing Supreme Court
precedent, but argues that it isn’t “proper” because the government’s
logic amounts to giving Congress virtually unlimited power. I think this
is exactly right; Vinson’s analysis is actually very similar to my own
in
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] (which is not to even suggest that he got the idea there).Vinson also notes that the mandate probably runs afoul of the five part test recently outlined by the Supreme Court in
United States v. Comstock,
though he ultimately does not base his ruling on this point. I
advanced a similar interpretation of Comstock and its implications for
the mandate case in
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]. Overall, Judge Vinson’s analysis of the Necessary and Proper Clause is a big improvement on
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Judge Henry Hudson in the Virginia case, Judge Vinson ruled that the
mandate is not “severable” from the rest of the health care bill, and
therefore invalidated it in its entirety. I think this may be somewhat
too sweeping. However, Vinson is on strong ground in ruling that the
mandate cannot be severed from the bill’s provisions forcing insurance
companies to cover people with preexisting conditions. As he emphasizes,
the federal government itself has repeatedly stressed this point in the
litigation.Finally, Judge Vinson rejected the 26 states’
argument that the funding provisions of the bill are unconstitutionally
“coercive.” I may have more to say on this issue in a later post.As
I have often noted in the past, this decision is just another step in
an ongoing legal battle. Ultimately, the issue of the individual mandate
will be resolved by the courts of appeals and probably by the Supreme
Court. Still, Judge Vinson’s ruling is a victory for opponents of the
mandate. It’s also extremely well-written, and thereby provides a
potential road map for appellate judges who might be inclined to rule
the same way.UPDATE:
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] takes Judge Vinson to task for holding that the mandate is not “proper”
because it leads to unlimited federal power. Orin claims that this is
is inconsistent with the “words” of Supreme Court precedent, citing a
dissent by Justice Thomas in
Gonzales v. Raich. However, the words of actual Supreme Court precedent repeatedly emphasize that Congress’ power is
not unlimited. For example, in
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the Court emphasized that ““The Constitution . . . withhold[s] from
Congress a plenary police power that would authorize enactment of every
type of legislation.” In its most recent Necessary and Proper Clause
decision,
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the Court similarly stated that there is no reason to “fear that our
holding today confers on Congress a general ‘police power, which the
Founders denied the National Government and reposed in the States’”
(quoting
United States v. Morrison); the Court emphasized that the regulation it was upholding was “narrow” in scope.
Gonzales v. Raich itself
gives
Congress virtually unlimited power to regulate “economic activity,” but
does not address the issue raised by the mandate case. Thus, if
Judge Vinson is right that the federal government’s argument for the
mandate would give Congress unlimited power, then the mandate indeed
conflicts with the words of Supreme Court precedent.Orin is also
wrong to suggest that Vinson “used a first principle to trump existing
Supreme Court caselaw.” Vinson in fact discussed those precedents,
including
Raich, in great detail, and noted how the individual mandate case is distinguishable from them (e.g. — the discussion of
Raich on pp. 36–44 of his opinion).As I have argued elsewhere, both
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]and
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] give Congress vastly greater authority than is actually authorized by
the Constitution. But going way too far down this road is not the same
as authorizing completely unlimited congressional power. At the very
least, it certainly isn’t what the words of the relevant Supreme Court
precedents say they have done.UPDATE #2: I have corrected an unfortunate typo in the title of this post.UPDATE
#3: In an update to his post, Orin insists that Judge Vinson failed to
consider existing precedent, which in Orin’s view imposes only
“symbolic” limits on congressional power. All I can say is that Vinson
in fact discusses current precedent in great detail and explains why it
doesn’t cover the mandate case. Moreover, nowhere does that precedent
state that the remaining limits to federal power are purely symbolic and
would not strike down any significant congressional policies. Thus, if
Vinson is correct in concluding that the argument for the individual
mandate would give Congress unconstrained authority to mandate anything
it wants, then the mandate really is contrary to existing precedent. At
the very least, existing precedent certainly doesn’t require upholding
the mandate. I discussed the relevant precedent in more detail
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