Obama HC bill upheld by US Court of Appeals

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Decision of the court.

The first 24 pages deal with jurisdictional issues that don't really address the merits of the HC bill. If you want to skip over that and get to the meat and potatoes, go directly to page 25. It's over 100 pages in total, including one concurring opinion and dissenting opinion (over jurisdiction to hear the case, based on a federal statute that would require a plaintiff to wait until after the law takes full effect). I've pulled out some key portions here.

I've been of the same position that's expressed here. The law is constitutional, even if bad. I hope that public attention will finally start turning toward the need to find better solutions than what Obama's HC bill offer, instead of the gripes over constitutional authority. Oh, and before someone babbles about supposed activist judges, He's a conservative appointed by Bush.

Appellants say that Congress cannot regulate based on such sweeping generalizations. Only individuals who are voluntarily engaging in an “activity” related to interstate commerce–not the uninsured, who are “inactive”–are within the scope of the Commerce Clause. The mandate, it should be recognized, is indeed somewhat novel, but so too, for all its elegance, is appellants’ argument. No Supreme Court case has ever held or implied that Congress’s Commerce Clause authority is limited to individuals who are presently engaging in an activity involving, or substantially affecting, interstate commerce.

We look first to the text of the Constitution. Article I, § 8, cl. 3, states: “The Congress shall have Power . . . To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes.” (emphasis added). At the time the Constitution was fashioned, to “regulate” meant, as it does now, “[t]o adjust by rule or method,” as well as “[t]o direct.”27 To “direct,” in turn, included “[t]o prescribe certain measure; to mark out a certain course,” and “[t]o order; to command.”28 In other words, to “regulate” can mean to require action, and nothing in the definition appears to limit that power only to those already active in relation to an interstate market. Nor was the term “commerce” limited to only existing commerce. There is therefore no textual support for appellants’ argument.

We acknowledge some discomfort with the Government’s failure to advance any clear doctrinal principles limiting congressional mandates that any American purchase any product or service in interstate commerce. But to tell the truth, those limits are not apparent to us, either because the power to require the entry into commerce is symmetrical with the power to prohibit or condition commercial behavior, or because we have not yet perceived a qualitative limitation. That difficulty is troubling, but not fatal, not least because we are interpreting the scope of a long-established constitutional power, not recognizing a new constitutional right.

The shift to the “substantial effects” doctrine in the early twentieth century recognized the reality that national economic problems are often the result of millions of individuals engaging in behavior that, in isolation, is seemingly unrelated to interstate commerce. See Lopez, 514 U.S. at 555-56. That accepted assumption undermines appellants’ argument; its very premise is that the magnitude of any one individual’s actions is irrelevant; the only thing that matters is whether the national problem Congress has identified is one that substantially affects interstate commerce. Indeed, in case after case, a version of appellants’ argument–that Congress’s power to regulate national economic problems, even those resulting from the aggregated effects of intrastate activity,
only extends to particular individuals if they have also affirmatively engaged in interstate commerce–has been rejected on that basis. See United States v. Wrightwood Dairy Co., 315 U.S. 110, 121 (1942) (surveying cases). Whether any “particular person . . . is, or is not, also engaged in interstate commerce,” the Supreme Court expressly held, is a mere “fortuitous circumstance” that has no bearing on Congress’s power to regulate an injury to interstate commerce. Id.

Wickard is very much in that vein. In Wickard, it mattered not that Filburn’s annual wheat output was trivial in relation to national production. Nor did it matter that Filburn was being penalized for behavior that had only the most tenuous impact on interstate commerce in of itself, since Filburn never intended the wheat to be used for commercial purposes, never sold it, and used it only to sustain his home farm. It was also irrelevant that the wheat quota could compel even those farmers with no intention of selling any wheat, in any market, to enter the interstate market. All that mattered were the overall dynamics of the wheat market–in other words, generalizations about likely, future economic behavior.

Cases since Wickard have minimized the significance of any particular individual’s behavior yet further. They have repeatedly confirmed that the actual impact of any one individual’s conduct on interstate commerce is immaterial, so long as a rational basis exists for believing that a congressional enactment, as a whole, substantially relates to interstate commerce.

A single individual need not even be engaged in any economic activity–i.e. not participating in any local or interstate market–so long as the individual is engaged in some type of behavior that would undercut a broader economic regulation if left unregulated. Raich, 545 U.S. at 36 (Scalia, J., concurring). And a single individual need not even be engaging in the harmful activity that Congress deems responsible for a national economic problem; it is enough that in general, most do. Thus, when Congress finds that organized crime harms interstate commerce, and that most loan sharks are part of organized crime, Congress can regulate even those individual loan sharks who are not part of organized crime. See Perez v. United States, 402 U.S. 146, 147, 153-57 (1971). Similarly, it is irrelevant that an indeterminate number of healthy, uninsured persons will never consume health care, and will therefore never affect the interstate market. Broad regulation is an inherent feature of Congress’s constitutional authority in this area; to regulate complex, nationwide economic problems is to necessarily deal in generalities.

That a direct requirement for most Americans to purchase any product or service seems an intrusive exercise of legislative power surely explains why Congress has not used this authority before–but that seems to us a political judgment rather than a recognition of constitutional limitations.

The right to be free from federal regulation is not absolute, and yields to the imperative that Congress be free to forge national solutions to national problems

As Justice Scalia explained in his concurrence in Gonzales v. Raich, 545 U.S. 1 (2005), Congress may regulate economic activities that have a substantial effect on interstate commerce and also enact laws to make a valid regulation of commerce effective.

 

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LOL, wow, no outrage? I'm surprised.