Is mandate constitutional?
If the individual health insurance mandate survives court challenges, states’ rights will have withered before our eyes.
By Jonathan Turley
USA Today
The new health care law has states and citizens lining up — but not quite in the way President Obama or Congress had hoped. Across the country, lawsuits are being filed that could have sweeping implications, not just for health care but our constitutional system. To date, 14 states have joined the stampede to the courthouse to challenge the legislation. One of the most contested issues is the so-called individual mandate under which Congress has ordered all citizens to get medical insurance or face fines. Though the federal government has the clear advantage in such litigation, these challenges should not be dismissed as baseless political maneuvering. There is a legitimate concern for many that this mandate constitutes the greatest (and perhaps the most lethal) challenge to states' rights in U.S. history.
With this legislation, Congress has effectively defined an uninsured 18-year-old man in Richmond as an interstate problem like a polluting factory. It is an assertion of federal power that is inherently at odds with the original vision of the Framers. If a citizen who fails to get health insurance is an interstate problem, it is difficult to see the limiting principle as Congress seeks to impose other requirements on citizens. The ultimate question may not be how Congress can prevail, but how much of states' rights would be left if it prevailed.
Hypocrisy rears its head
To get to the constitutional question, you first have to strip away the deep layer of hypocrisy in Washington. Many lawmakers now screaming about the sanctity of federalism voted for prior laws that were overturned by the Supreme Court on federalism grounds. Moreover, few of these mostly Republican members uttered a word of support when states opposed federal interventions on medical marijuana and physician-assisted suicide during the Bush administration. The guarantee of federalism was essential to ratifying the Constitution and embodied in the 10th Amendment guaranteeing that "powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people." Historically, however, federalism is a constitutional rule honored largely in the breach by Congress.
(More here.)
By Jonathan Turley
USA Today
The new health care law has states and citizens lining up — but not quite in the way President Obama or Congress had hoped. Across the country, lawsuits are being filed that could have sweeping implications, not just for health care but our constitutional system. To date, 14 states have joined the stampede to the courthouse to challenge the legislation. One of the most contested issues is the so-called individual mandate under which Congress has ordered all citizens to get medical insurance or face fines. Though the federal government has the clear advantage in such litigation, these challenges should not be dismissed as baseless political maneuvering. There is a legitimate concern for many that this mandate constitutes the greatest (and perhaps the most lethal) challenge to states' rights in U.S. history.
With this legislation, Congress has effectively defined an uninsured 18-year-old man in Richmond as an interstate problem like a polluting factory. It is an assertion of federal power that is inherently at odds with the original vision of the Framers. If a citizen who fails to get health insurance is an interstate problem, it is difficult to see the limiting principle as Congress seeks to impose other requirements on citizens. The ultimate question may not be how Congress can prevail, but how much of states' rights would be left if it prevailed.
Hypocrisy rears its head
To get to the constitutional question, you first have to strip away the deep layer of hypocrisy in Washington. Many lawmakers now screaming about the sanctity of federalism voted for prior laws that were overturned by the Supreme Court on federalism grounds. Moreover, few of these mostly Republican members uttered a word of support when states opposed federal interventions on medical marijuana and physician-assisted suicide during the Bush administration. The guarantee of federalism was essential to ratifying the Constitution and embodied in the 10th Amendment guaranteeing that "powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people." Historically, however, federalism is a constitutional rule honored largely in the breach by Congress.
(More here.)
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