Victory For ObamaCare!

The decision in National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius is a victory for the supporters of the Affordable Care Act, and a fairly broad vindication for the constitutionality of the law.  Here are my initial thoughts:

This is a big win for the Obama Administration.  The only portion of the law struck down is the Medicaid expansion provision, on the grounds that Congress cannot threaten to take away funds previously granted to the States if the States fail to accept new conditions.  This strikes me as a fairly reasonable gloss on the case of South Dakota v. Dole and, at the same time, a constitutional interpretation that still allows Congress a fair amount of flexibility to attach conditions to the receipt of new federal dollars.

I am not persuaded by Justice Robert’s argument rejecting Congress’ power under the Commerce Clause.  It strikes me as primarily conclusory rather than analytical, and my initial reaction is that it should be considered dicta since Justice Roberts upholds the ACA on other grounds.  Of course, I have already made clear that I am inclined to agree with Justice Ginsburg that the Court’s precedent under the Commerce Clause provides ample support for the ACA’s constitutionality, as I argued in previous posts here and here.

Nor am I convinced by Robert’s tax argument.  He labors a great deal to make the case that the ACA does not impose a “tax” for purposes of the statutory Ant-Injunction Act but nonetheless imposes a “tax” under Congress’ constitutional taxing authority.

It appears to me that Roberts tried to split the baby in a statesman-like way, by giving victory to Obama but by using reasoning and language designed to placate President Obama’s critics.  Am I the only person who read Justice Robert’s opinion and thought of Marbury v. Madison?

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Restricting Liberty in the Name of Equality

Robust equality is a relatively recent part of the American constitutional landscape, rooted in a limited way in the Declaration of Independence and then formally embraced in the Constitution’s 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868, though it took another near century to buttress that guarantee with meaningful legal force. By contrast, liberty—e.g., of religious exercise, of speech, and of the press—and its attendant guarantee of non-deprivation without due process of law, go back to the nation’s founding if not decades and in some cases centuries before.

In recent years, however, with great domestic and international dynamics at work, there has ascended into prominence and influence a norm of equality or nondiscrimination, or an unabashedly pursued equality of outcome, effectively supplanting the centrality of individual or group liberty as the citizen’s core constitutional guarantees.

Part of this has been achieved by legitimate historical and other academic research and theorizing, though it should be noted that at times the neutrality of those undertaking such efforts may rightly be questioned. Part of this sea change, though, has come from a public and university-sanctioned tolerance for the suppression of viewpoints that conflict with the modern ethos of equality, variously defined. Many of these developments, moreover, have resulted from outside pressures—from interest groups to like-minded accrediting organizations—that seemingly leave the institutions with little choice but to comply with their dictates.

As repeatedly documented by, among others groups, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education and the Center for Campus Free Speech, colleges and universities ironically have sometimes been the most egregious censors of speech under the banner of equality (or of perceived equal treatment), which perversely betrays a subordination of the time-honored values of truth-seeking and knowledge propagation to relatively fleeting interest-group pressures and ideological expediency.

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ObamaCare Is Still Constitutional

Today I particpated in another debate over the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate.  At the invitation of the Milwaukee Chapters of the Federalist Society and the American Constitution Society, I debated Robert Levy of the Cato Institute over luncheon at the Milwaukee Athletic Club.  My thanks to our hosts, to Mr. Levy, and to the audience.  Below are my prepared remarks.  My previous post on the consitutionality of the individual mandate can be viewed here.

In December 1783, George Washington gave a toast at a dinner celebrating the formal dissolution of the Revolutionary Army.  He did not use his toast to offer a tribute to individual liberty.  Nor did he sing the praises of limited government.  Instead, his toast was a simple expression of what he hoped the future would bring to our new nation. He raised his glass and he said: “Competent powers to Congress for general purposes.”

We must never forget that our Constitution is a document that was intended to create competent powers for Congress for general purposes.

Much of what Mr. Levy cites in oppostion to the individual mandate is based upon abstract principles.  However, when we interpret the Constitution, we do not begin with abstract theories of political philosophy, and then attempt to shoehorn those theories into the text.

Instead, when we interpret the Constitution, we begin by looking to the text itself.

The power to “regulate,” which is the power delegated to Congress under the Commerce Clause, is the power to prescribe the rules by which commerce is governed.  The word “regulate” means “to direct” or “to command.”  Therefore, the plain meaning of the word “regulate” in the text includes a grant to Congress of the power to require action.

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