by Nicole Flatow
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit today struck down the health care reform law’s individual coverage provision.
The 2-1 decision partially upheld a lower court ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Roger Vinson, but Chief Judge Joel Dubina and Judge Frank Hull did not agree with Vinson that the entire law should be invalidated, Politico reports.
Judges Dubina and Hull, writing for the majority, reasoned that if this provision could be upheld, there would be no clear way to set limits on Congress’s power.
“We have not found any generally applicable, judicially enforceable limiting principle that would permit us to uphold the mandate without obliterating the boundaries inherent in the system of enumerated congressional powers,” they wrote.
In his dissent, Judge Stanley Marcus countered that the majority ignored the “undeniable fact that Congress’ commerce power has grown exponentially over the past two centuries, and is now generally accepted as having afforded Congress the authority to create rules regulating large areas of our national economy.”
In June, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit came to the opposite conclusion and upheld the entire law as constitutional. Judge Jeffrey Sutton, a George W. Bush appointee and “Federalist Society favorite,” offered “potent support” when he issued a concurring opinion upholding the constitutionality of the law, the National Senior Citizens Law Center’s Simon Lazarus wrote for ACSblog.
American Constitution Society Executive Director Caroline Fredrickson blasted the majority's conclusion as inconsistent with the widely held understanding of the Constitution’s commerce clause.
“Numerous legal experts have confirmed that regulating the health care industry is well within the powers granted to Congress by the Constitution, and that limiting this power would violate the intent of the nation’s founders,” Fredrickson said.
She pointed to a statement signed by more than 135 leading law scholars that calls the law’s constitutionality “unambiguous,” and Lazarus's ACS Issue Brief, which explains that the health care system is a $2 trillion industry with a wide-ranging impact on the nation’s economy, and therefore well within the constitutional power of Congress to regulate.
“As the Issue Brief points out, if Congress cannot regulate an industry with such an enormous impact on our economy, what limit is there on the ability of judges to undermine federal stewardship of similarly pressing issues?” Fredrickson said.
During a recent debate on NPR's "Tell Me More," Fredrickson explained, "The touchstone really, as it has been under Supreme Court precedent for decades and decades -- is that does this affect interstate commerce? And when you are talking about an industry that affects 17 percent of our economy, it clearly does affect commerce; it’s clearly within the scope of the commerce clause."
Today’s decision signals discord among the appeals courts, practically assuring that the health care law is headed to the Supreme Court, Stephen Stromberg suggests in The Washington Post.
Read today’s decision here. And for more information about the numerous legal challenges to the health care reform law, see ACS’s Affordable Care Act Resources Page.
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