We first conclude that the Act’s Medicaid expansion is constitutional.
Existing Supreme Court precedent does not establish that Congress’s inducements
are unconstitutionally coercive, especially when the federal government will bear
nearly all the costs of the program’s amplified enrollments.
Next, the individual mandate was enacted as a regulatory penalty, not a
revenue-raising tax, and cannot be sustained as an exercise of Congress’s power
under the Taxing and Spending Clause. The mandate is denominated as a penalty in
the Act itself, and the legislative history and relevant case law confirm this reading
of its function.
Further, the individual mandate exceeds Congress’s enumerated commerce
power and is unconstitutional. This economic mandate represents a wholly novel
and potentially unbounded assertion of congressional authority: the ability to
compel Americans to purchase an expensive health insurance product they have
elected not to buy, and to make them re-purchase that insurance product every
month for their entire lives. 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. “Uniqueness” is not a constitutional principle in any antecedent Supreme
Court decision. The individual mandate also finds no refuge in the aggregation doctrine, for decisions to abstain from the purchase of a product or service,
whatever their cumulative effect, lack a sufficient nexus to commerce.145
The individual mandate, however, can be severed from the remainder of the
Act’s myriad reforms. The presumption of severability is rooted in notions of
judicial restraint and respect for the separation of powers in our constitutional
system. The Act’s other provisions remain legally operative after the mandate’s
excision, and the high burden needed under Supreme Court precedent to rebut the
presumption of severability has not been met.
Accordingly, we affirm in part and reverse in part the judgment of the district
court.
AFFIRMED in part and REVERSED in part.
145Our respected dissenting colleague says that the majority: (1) “has ignored the broad
power of Congress”; (2) “has ignored the Supreme Court’s expansive reading of the Commerce
Clause”; (3) “presume[s] to sit as a superlegislature”; (4) “misapprehends the role of a reviewing
court”; and (5) ignores that “as nonelected judicial officers, we are not afforded the opportunity
to rewrite statutes we don’t like.” See Dissenting Op. at 208–209, 243. We do not respond to
these contentions, especially given (1) our extensive and exceedingly careful review of the Act,
Supreme Court precedent, and the parties’ arguments, and (2) our holding that the Act, despite
significant challenges to this massive and sweeping federal regulation and spending, falls within
the ambit and prerogative of Congress’s broad commerce power, except for one section, §
5000A. We do, however, refuse to abdicate our constitutional duty when Congress has acted
beyond its enumerated Commerce Clause power in mandating that Americans, from cradle to
grave, purchase an insurance product from a private company.
AFFIRMED in part and REVERSED in part.
This is the heart of it. Were this allowed to stand, there would be no hope of curtailing federal power. The rest of the act can be dealth with by legislative repeal, but the as long as SCOTUS agrees with this line of thinking (and it's clearly unconstitional), we'll be fine.
This is the death nail in Obamacare because now the USSC doesn't even have to rule on the case, all they have to do is affirm this courts decision base strictly on the Individual Mandate.
So now there’s a “presumption of severability?” Then why were all these legislators wasting so much time writing severability clauses for all these decades? *rolleyes*
Geez, what a corrupt set of judges this is.
the way around this is to federalize all medical care so it is NOT a private company. IOW single payer.