Category Archives: Supreme Court

Point: How The Supreme Court Will Find The Individual Mandate Constitutional

This is part of The Liberty Papers’ continuing Point/Counterpoint series, where two contributors (or a contributor and a guest) argue competing sides of an issue. In this installment, I will argue that the Supreme Court has a realistic defensible argument to find the Individual Mandate in ObamaCare Constitutional. Tomorrow, Doug Mataconis will respond with a rebuttal. Links will be updated in each post as they appear.

UPDATE 4/4: Doug’s rebuttal is available here.

As always, we’re constantly looking for good debate topics for this series, and qualified guest posters to argue one side against one of the contributors.

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Stipulated up front — I believe that ObamaCare is a severe affront to individual rights, limited government, and the ideals upon which our Republic was founded. In my own view of Constitutional jurisprudence, overturning the law is a no brainer. But as with most things our government does, they’re not listening to me, so the question is simple:

Does the Supreme Court have enough precedent to find the individual mandate Constitutional?

I think they do. And the argument has several elements.

Forcing You To Act

One of the first points of contention is the question of regulating activity versus regulating inactivity. The question being whether or not the Congress can force you to act if you choose not to. Many claim that Congress forcing you to purchase a good from a private seller is a bridge farther than they’ve ever gone before.

But taking the question of “buying from a private seller” out of the equation, is anyone suggesting that the government can’t force you to do something under threat of fine or jail? Ever heard of the Selective Service? I’d say a government that can force me to report for military service to die for my country is asking something a fair bit more serious than demanding I have health insurance. The government in this case can COMPEL you to do something within its rightful power — the power to raise armies. Or on a subject less likely to result in ending up full of lead, there’s Federal jury service. The government can COMPEL you to do something within its rightful power — the power to raise courts and ensure defendants a fair trial judged by their peers.

The question isn’t whether or not the government can force you to do something — Republicans, Democrats, Presidents, and Supreme Court Justices have all agreed that it can. The question is whether or not forcing you to buy health insurance falls within the power of what they can force you to do.

The Commerce Clause

Most of the debate so far has centered around whether the mandate — a regulation of inactivity, not of activity, is within Congress’ commerce clause power. We’ve had cases like Wickard v. Filburn, where the Court has ruled that someones activity can be regulated whether or not it directly engages in interstate commerce, because the act of growing your own wheat [and not buying it from the market] may have an affect on interstate commerce. We’ve even had Gonzales v. Raich, where the Court has ruled that the grasp of Congress extends even to activities which affect an interstate market in goods the government would prefer have no market at all.

The Government’s lawyers in this case say that the mandate is Constitutional because not buying insurance may affect interstate commerce. The opposition states that Congress can regulate activity related to interstate commerce, but regulating inactivity is a bridge too far. Supporters of ObamaCare, however, do have a point here. It can hardly be argued that refusing to purchase health insurance means that you’re not impacting the US healthcare system. Unless you have an ironclad “do not treat” waiver stapled to your forehead at all times, I’m pretty certain that if you’re in a car wreck and unconscious, you’re going to become a participant in the healthcare market. And if you don’t have insurance, that’s likely to bankrupt you, cost the taxpayer a hefty sum, or both. In this case, your supposed inactivity really is activity.

But this isn’t the only argument. One of the key points that is not argued is whether or not the US Congress has the authority to regulate the US Healthcare market at all. And the reason that’s not being argued is that it’s flatly assumed that Congress can regulate the healthcare market. In fact, even most pro-liberty Constitutionalists agree that if Congress had simply voted for a single-payer system, current Supreme Court jurisprudence wouldn’t have any cause to overturn it. So this brings us to our next point:

The Necessary and Proper Clause

This is really the crux. The clause says that Congress has power to make all laws “necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States.” A long time ago, that limited the government significantly. In fact, in the fight over the First Bank of The United States, the Feds argued that the Bank was necessary to engage in all the things that the government legitimately and Constitutionally needed to do. The opponents argued that while the Bank may be convenient and helpful to the government to do what it needs to do, it was hardly necessary. They took a very strong view that the word “necessary” meant what it said — if you could accomplish the goal without doing X, then X didn’t meet the Constitutional requirement of necessity.

Sadly, the Necessary & Proper clause was one of the first to get ignored by the Supreme Court, as Randy Barnett (a lawyer opposing ObamaCare in this case) pointed out in his book Restoring the Lost Constitution. One of the key growths in Government power over the early days of the Republic was to grant deference to Government lawyers if they said something was necessary.

In this case, much of the oral arguments centered around whether ObamaCare could stand without the individual mandate. Both sides agreed that Congress has the power to regulate healthcare, but they didn’t agree that the individual mandate was, on its own, Constitutional. After all, if they can mandate you purchase insurance, which might help restrain the growth of healthcare costs, might they not also mandate you purchase broccoli, as the health effects thereof might help restrain the growth of healthcare costs?

Many ObamaCare opponents cheered at the lines of questioning whether ruling the mandate Unconstitutional would cause the entire law to fall. Those opponents believed that it was a way for the Court’s conservative wing to ensure that they could toss out the whole law, rather than simply severing the mandate. But looking at the argument another way, it proves that the mandate is necessary to the law.

So let’s look at the “necessary and proper” test. First is propriety — laws made by Congress are only proper if they relate to one of its Constitutional powers. While I might not think Congress has legitimate authority to make sweeping healthcare legislation, I think we’ve well established that current Court jurisprudence is untroubled by the idea that Congress has commerce clause power to regulate healthcare. So the test of propriety is cleared. The second is necessity: is the mandate necessary to fulfill Congress’ authority to regulate the interstate commerce of healthcare. And I think the oral arguments proved, regardless of what side you’re on in this debate, that the mandate is absolutely necessary to the structure of the law. Get rid of the mandate, and you might as well throw the whole thing out.

So if regulating the healthcare market is a legitimate authority of Congress, within their purview granted by the commerce clause, then the question becomes whether this mandate is necessary for them to exercise their authority. I think the answer, as shown by oral argument, is yes. So the government clears the bars of both the Commerce Clause and the Necessary and Proper clause.

Limiting Principles

A final argument by the opponents has been that if the mandate stands, it grants Congress ultimate power, which the Court will not allow to happen. And they’ve been encouraged by some lines of questioning in oral argument, where the “broccoli test” showed that the Government’s lawyers were unable to articulate a limiting principle of their argument.

But as loath as I am to agree with Kevin Drum on something (or whoever he borrowed the argument from), the Government doesn’t need to articulate a limiting principle. It’s up to the Court to determine whether THIS action is Constitutional. And they could very easily craft a limiting principle that allows the individual insurance mandate but doesn’t allow for an individual broccoli mandate.

How simple is it?

Q. Is the individual insurance mandate absolutely necessary to the very structure of Obamacare?
A. Yes.
Q. Is the hypothetical broccoli mandate absolutely necessary to the very structure of Obamacare?
A. No. Are you f’ing serious?

The Court already has the “necessary & proper” clause as its limiting principle. If they accept the basic structure of ObamaCare as Constitutional, extending to Congress a provision that might be Unconstitutional on its own, but necessary as part of a wider power, would not be a shock.

Conclusion

I’m not going to claim that the above argument suggests that the Court will find ObamaCare Constitutional. I’m a firm believer in the idea that the Justices often decide — like people in all other walks of life — what they want to do and rationalize an argument into it afterwards. And I think we have a pretty decent idea how 8 of the 9 Justices will decide in this case, a 4-4 tie broken by Anthony Kennedy.

Should Kennedy vote to overturn the mandate, I expect the majority opinion to fall to one of the solid conservative justices. Should Kennedy vote to uphold, he very well might pen the majority opinion. For Kennedy to accept the mandate, I think he has to see a legitimate limiting principle — and the necessary & proper clause provides both the grounds for upholding the mandate and the inklings of a limiting principle in one fell swoop. Oh, and in case you followed the oral arguments, Kennedy was *very* interested in the concept of severability and seemed to assume, whether he votes to keep it or toss it, that the mandate was necessary to the structure.

I don’t know which way this thing’s gonna go, but I’m not as confident as other libertarians, conservatives, and small-government Constitutionalists. I see a very plausible rationale for upholding it, and thus I think we’re hoping that one oft-flighty Justice happens to come down on our side of the vote.

Quote Of The Day

Is there a more worthless phrase on the political landscape than “judicial activism”?

And a court that gave us Bush v. Gore and Citizens United will prove conclusively that it sees no limits on its power, no need to defer to those elected to make our laws. A Supreme Court that is supposed to give us justice will instead deliver ideology.

Really? EJ Dionne thinks that a legislature should be able to do whatever it wants, even if it violates the Constitution (as the Florida elections board did in Bush v. Gore and the US Congress did in Citizens United)? So he wants to throw out the entire doctrine of judicial review that’s existed since the days of English Common Law & Marbury v. Madison?

No, I don’t think that’s it. I don’t think he supports the Congress doing things that are unconstitutional. He’s just attacking the Court for striking down policies he likes. Just as conservatives do when the Court strikes down policies they like.

Claims of “judicial activism” are just criticisms of a Court doing something you disapprove of. But claims that the Court should defer to the legislature are misplaced — the Court is a check on the power of the legislature, as it should be. It’s there to rein in the legislature when they try to do something beyond the bounds of their Constitutional authority. That’s not judicial activism, that’s their job.

SCOTUS: Police Placing GPS Tracking Device on a Vehicle Without Warrant Violates the Fourth Amendment [or Does it?]

How about some good news on the civil liberties front to kick off the week for a change? Robert Barnes writing for The Washington Post reports that SCOTUS ruled 9-0 in United States v. Jones stating that the police placing a GPS tracking device on a person’s vehicle and tracking said vehicle over days, weeks, or months without a warrant violates the Fourth Amendment’s guarantee against unreasonable searches.

The Supreme Court ruled unanimously Monday that police must obtain a search warrant before using a GPS device to track criminal suspects. But the justices left for another day larger questions about how technology has altered a person’s expectation of privacy.

Justice Antonin Scalia wrote that the government needed a valid warrant before attaching a GPS device to the Jeep used by D.C. drug kingpin Antoine Jones, who was convicted in part because police tracked his movements on public roads for 28 days.

“We hold that the government’s installation of a GPS device on a target’s vehicle, and its use of that device to monitor the vehicle’s movements, constitutes a ‘search’ ” under the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable searches and seizures, Scalia wrote.

[…]

Alito’s point was that it was the lengthy GPS surveillance of Jones itself that violated the Fourth Amendment and that “the use of longer term GPS monitoring in investigations of most offenses impinges on expectations of privacy.”

“For such offenses,” he wrote, “society’s expectation has been that law enforcement agents and others would not — and indeed, in the main, simply could not — secretly monitor and catalogue every single movement of an individual’s car for a very long period.”

The only disagreement among the Justices was whether or not the decision went far enough to protect individuals in a 21st century world based on a 18th century law (i.e. the Fourth Amendment).

Hey, even a blind squirrel can find a nut once in awhile and in even rarer cases, 9 Supreme Court Justices.

***Correction/Further Analysis***
If you followed the link to The Washington Post article, you might notice that the parts I quoted don’t match up exactly. This is because the article has since been edited with a more complete explanation of what United States v. Jones really means. It appears that I put entirely too much trust into what was being reported in the media here and elsewhere (and I still haven’t gotten around to reading the opinion for myself).

Doug Mataconis (who is a lawyer; I am not) was the first to point out that the coverage of this ruling isn’t quite as good from a civil liberties perspective as the media would have us believe:

I think all you can really say is that, under circumstances of this case, the Court found that the use of the tracking device without a warrant was impermissible. As the majority opinion notes, however, the Government attempted to raise in their arguments to the Supreme Court the theory that the search was supported by reasonable suspicion and/or probable cause to believe that Jones was the leader of a drug gang. Under such a theory, the use of the tracking device would have theoretically been justified even without a warrant.

You can read a more detailed analysis from Doug here Outside the Beltway.

Doug also pointed me to this article by Orin Kerr at The Volokh Conspiracy post entitled “What Jones Does Not Hold”

It seems that I wasn’t the only one mislead about the true impact of this ruling. Even Radley Balko at The Agitator had to make some corrections to his post regarding this case and made reference to the same post by Kerr as well as an even more discouraging analysis from Tom Goldstein at SCOTUSblog.

Montana Firearms Freedom Act: Tilting At Windmills

While I laud any state trying to expand the freedom of its residents while simultaneously thumbing it’s nose at Washington, I can’t see this ending well:

On October 1, 2009, Montana passed the Montana Firearms Freedom Act, the purpose of which was to regulate guns manufactured and kept within Montana state lines under a less restrictive regulatory regime than federal law provides. That same day, to ensure that Montanans could enjoy the benefits of this less restrictive state regulation, the Montana Shooting Sports Association filed a declaratory judgment claim in federal court.

The lawsuit’s importance is not limited to Montana, as seven other states have passed laws similar to the MFFA and 20 states have introduced such legislation. The goal here is to reinforce state regulatory authority over commerce that is by definition intrastate, to take back some of the ground occupied by modern Commerce Clause jurisprudence.

The district court granted the government’s motion to dismiss, however, and MSSA appealed to the Ninth Circuit. Now on appeal, Cato has joined the Goldwater Institute to file an amicus brief supporting the MSSA and arguing that federal power does not preempt Montana’s ability to exercise its sovereign police powers to facilitate the exercise of individual rights protected by the Second and Ninth Amendments. More specifically, for federal law to trump the MFFA, the government must claim that the Commerce and Necessary and Proper Clauses give it the power to regulate wholly intrastate manufacture, sale, and possession of guns, which MSSA argues is a state-specific market distinct from any related national one.

The general question here is whether modern Commerce Clause jurisprudence should be upended for this case. I believe it should, but I believe it won’t. The manufacture/sale/possession of firearms, while declared to be purely intrastate matters, would seem to “substantially affect” interstate commerce in the same way as the Court found in Wickard & Raich. On the question of whether the activity affects interstate commerce, I don’t think there can be any debate should current Commerce Clause jurisprudence hold. Under such jurisprudence, the Feds can reasonably claim that their more stringent requirements for firearms is Necessary to effectively regulate firearms in an interstate manner.

The actual brief (linked above) submitted by Goldwater & Cato draws more narrow inferences than the quoted text above, however. They recognize the current precedent of Wickard & Raich, but push a state sovereignty angle which seems much more substantial. The argument seems to be that in areas traditionally regulated at the state level, rather than the federal level, and where the state action is protecting individual liberty rather than restricting it (i.e. no 14th amendment privileges & immunities issues here), the level of scrutiny required by the Feds to override State law should be significantly higher. However, I suspect that such efforts will still either fall short, or require Supreme Court gymnastics to carve out a VERY narrow exception here (i.e. emanations & penumbra gymnastics).

It’s telling that one of the cases used as justification here is a case [Massachusetts v. Sebelius] where Massachusetts argued against the DOMA, on the grounds that Massachusetts more libertarian law upholding same-sex unions was infringed upon by DOMA. Effectively DOMA made it impossible for certain federally-funded programs which would traditionally go to “married” couples (or survivors thereof) could not be extended to same-sex couples. Because the regulation of marriage was traditionally within the purview of the States, not the Feds, and because DOMA violated the State’s liberty-protecting equal protection clause within the Massachusetts Constitution, for the Congress to intervene here was shown to be a violation of Massachusetts sovereignty.

However, I don’t think the Massachusetts case will be applicable here. While it is traditionally the purview of the States to regulate marriage, I don’t think it can be shown here that Massachusetts recognition of same-sex marriage substantially affects interstate commerce. The portion of DOMA that would have protected states from being forced to recognize same-sex marriages from other states was also not at issue. While it might be within the general police powers of the States to regulate some aspects of firearms manufacture/sale/ownership, I believe the Court would find the Commerce Clause precedent more binding than a finding of state sovereignty.

Another aspect of the state sovereignty argument appears in section I-A of the brief [p7-11]. Several points are raised:

  • That the Federal government cannot force a State legislature to legislate as directed by the Feds. In this case, I don’t believe the point applies, as the Feds are not demanding the States implement this regulation for them, but rather declaring such regulation to be a Federal matter to be decided by Congress rather than the States.
  • That the Federal government cannot commandeer State resources for the execution of federal regulation. Again, they are not forcing State police to enforce a more strict version of firearms regulation, and various drug decriminalization (and State medical marijuana initiatives) have created a situation where, while a State may [unconstitutionally] declare certain activities legal that the Federal government deems illegal, the States are within their rights to limit the use of State resources for investigation and prosecution of Federal crimes that they deem unwieldy. California can simultaneously hold the position that while medical marijuana is Federally illegal, the State does not consider it criminal, and thus the Feds themselves must enforce it if they so choose.
  • That the Federal government may not regulate/criminalize wholly intrastate activities with no economic impact. I think Commerce Clause jurisprudence would suggest that manufacture/sale/possession of weapons cannot be shown to be wholly intrastate, and it certainly includes economic impact.
  • Finally, that the Federal government may not subject State government employees to the dictates or working regulations of the Federal government — I think this one is so far removed from the case at hand to not warrant discussion.

To argue that this is a matter of state sovereignty is to argue that regulations of firearms has been a long-standing matter of the states themselves, and that for the Federal government to step in and demand more stringent regulation under Commerce Clause grounds requires such heightened scrutiny that cannot be supported here. However, Federal firearms laws have been in force since 1934, and while this is not proof that the regulation of firearm manufacture/sale/ownership should be a Federal matter, it certainly cuts some strength from the argument that this is purely a matter of state sovereignty.

It seems to me that this lawsuit is a bit of a hail mary. For it to succeed, we would need to see a sea-change in Commerce Clause jurisprudence (almost impossibly unlikely), or for the Brady Bill and/or National Firearms Act to be struck down as Unconstitutional (because both would infringe on state sovereignty). A greater likelihood, based on current conservative makeup of the court, would be a VERY narrowly worded decision involving some legal gymnastics. However, given the deference to Federal power I’ve seen from Roberts & Alito, and given that they would need such a narrow crafting to ensure that they wouldn’t open up whole hosts of other State sovereignty challenges to Federal law, I don’t see much likelihood there. Fundamentally the plaintiffs are pushing for a general large change in Federal/State interaction, one which I doubt the Supreme Court is ready to uphold.

Of course, that’s all assuming it ever makes it to the Supreme Court, itself an unlikely prospect.

While I have great sympathy for the plaintiffs here, I can’t say I’d be laying strong odds on their success.
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SCOTUS Gets Snyder v. Phelps Exactly Right

If there is one thing that unites most Americans of every political persuasion, it would be the universal disgust of Fred Phelps and his Westboro Baptist Church. Hell, even the KKK has distanced itself from this hate group ( a very small group that consists mostly of Phelps’ family).

All that said, even as disgusting, vile, and hateful as their speech is, even their speech is protected by the First Amendment. In a 8-1 ruling in Snyder v. Phelps, SCOTUS reached that very conclusion.

From Justice Roberts Opinion of the Court:

P12

Given that Westboro’s speech was at a public place on a matter of public concern, that speech is entitled to “special protection” under the First Amendment. Such speech cannot be restricted simply because it is upsetting or arouses contempt. “If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable.” Texas v. Johnson, 491 U. S. 397, 414 (1989). Indeed, “the point of all speech protection . . . is to shield just those choices of content that in someone’s eyes are misguided, or even hurtful.” Hurley v. Irish-American Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Group of Boston, Inc., 515 U. S. 557, 574 (1995).

The jury here was instructed that it could hold Westboro liable for intentional infliction of emotional distress based on a finding that Westboro’s picketing “outrageous.”“Outrageousness,” however, is a highly malleable standard with “an inherent subjectiveness about it which would allow a jury to impose liability on the basis of the jurors’ tastes or views, or perhaps on the basis of their dislike of a particular expression.” Hustler, 485 U. S., at 55 (internal quotation marks omitted). In a case such as this, a jury is “unlikely to be neutral with respect to the content of [the]speech,” posing “a real danger of becoming an instrument for the suppression of . . . ‘vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasan[t]’” expression. Bose Corp., 466 U. S., at 510 (quoting New York Times, 376 U. S., at 270). Such a risk is unacceptable; “in public debate [we] must tolerate insulting, and even outrageous, speech in order to provide adequate ‘breathing space’ to the freedoms protected by the First Amendment.” Boos v. Barry, 485 U. S. 312, 322 (1988) (some internal quotation marks omitted).

[…]

[P14 and 15]

Westboro believes that America is morally flawed; many Americans might feel the same about Westboro. Westboro’s funeral picketing is certainly hurtful and its contribution to public discourse may be negligible. But Westboro addressed matters of public import on public property, in a peaceful manner, in full compliance with the guidance of local officials. The speech was indeed planned to coincide with Matthew Snyder’s funeral, but did not itself disrupt that funeral, and Westboro’s choice to conduct its picketing at that time and place did not alter the nature of its speech.

Justice Alito, the sole dissenting Justice also offered a very good observation about WBC’s activities:

Alito, J., dissenting

P4 and 5

On the morning of Matthew Snyder’s funeral, respondents could have chosen to stage their protest at countless locations […]

But of course, a small group picketing at any of these locations would have probably gone unnoticed.

[…]

This strategy works because it is expected that respondents’ verbal assaults will wound the family and friends of the deceased and because the media is irresistibly drawn to the sight of persons who are visibly in grief. The more outrageous the funeral protest, the more publicity the Westboro Baptist Church is able to obtain.

In a free society, we have to accept that there will be people like Fred Phelps that we have to tolerate. It’s a very slippery slope to suggest that due to the offensive nature of WBC’s speech that the First Amendment doesn’t apply. As Justice Alito says here, the only reason why WBC chooses to picket funerals is because they know they will get publicity. The best thing the MSM can do is ignore them; don’t give them the free publicity they so crave. Phelps has a right to speak but not a right to be heard.

I have nothing but sympathy to the Snyder family and am very sorry they had to be subject to the hateful antics of Fred Phelps on the day they buried their son. The sad irony is, if not for the brave men like Matthew Snyder, Fred Phelps would not have the ability to express himself in the manner he does.

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