Posted on 03/21/2014 9:53:30 AM PDT by Sub-Driver
Could Citizens United and a semi-colon undo Obamacare?
National Constitution Center By Scott Bomboy 5 hours ago
Next Tuesday, the Supreme Court will hear two cases related to the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, and the stakes are high for both sides. In fact, the interpretation of a semi-colon in the context of the First Amendment could play a critical role.
The semi-colon’s use was argued in the appeals court decision that led one of the two cases to the Supreme Court’s doorstep.
“Appellants also argue that Citizens United is applicable to the Free Exercise [of religion] Clause because ―the authors of the First Amendment only separated the Free Exercise Clause and the Free Speech Clause by a semi-colon, thus showing the continuation of intent between the two,” said circuit judge Robert Cowen in the Conestoga Wood appeals court decision. “We are not persuaded that the use of a semi-colon means that each clause of the First Amendment must be interpreted jointly.”
In other words, the semi-colon argument holds that the free exercise of religion and free exercise of speech are linked. Since the Citizens United case gave corporations the same free speech rights as people, the argument states that corporations should have the same free religious exercise rights as people, too, and they should be able to opt out of Obamacare.
Judge Cowen didn’t agree with the logic, but now the issue is one of several that will be argued in front of the Supreme Court on Tuesday.
In late November 2013, the Justices accepted the two cases, to be argued at the same time, which question the government’s ability to compel for-profit companies with religious convictions to pay for birth-control coverage.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
You and me both!
“So the opposition’s argument is that if I create a Corporation I surrender all of my Constitutional rights in the act of running it?”
That already happened years and years ago with the quota and hiring systems.
“A semicolon and a period are pretty much interchangeable.”
Nope.
A comma is a pause in thought that signals a change, or maybe an addition, about to be added to the thought just expressed.
A semi-colon calls for a longer pause; it means there’s a bigger change or addition coming; it navigates a slightly a more complicated thought.
A period signals the end of a thought. It’s a clear signal that there’s both a new sentence and a new thought coming.
{Each of the above sentences is both an explantation and illustration of correct semi-colon, comma, and period usage.)
Who knew that over 200 years ago — PUNCTUATION — would be that critical!
Punctuation Saves Lives
“Eat more children.”
versus
“Eat more, children.”
LOL
In some uses of the semicolon, that's correct. The two phrases could be two separate sentences. I could have written just as properly: In some uses of the semicolon, that's correct; the two phrases could be two separate sentences.
However, the semicolon can also be used to separate items in a list. Here is the text of the First Amendment:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
Here, the semicolon is used to distinguish between the various elements of the list that “Congress shall make no law respecting...” A reason for using the semicolon is that several of the elements comprising the list contain commas, and they aren't meant to denote the beginning of a new item on the list, but rather are used to manage the grammar within the particular element.
Certainly, from a strictly grammatical perspective, each item is equally the object of the phrase, “Congress shall make no law respecting...” Thus, if the Supreme Court ruled that corporations, as legal persons, enjoy the First Amendment-recognized right to free speech, it is altogether plain that the text of the amendment treats the rights of such legal persons as having a right to the free exercise of religion.
At least, from the perspective of the grammatical meaning.
sitetest
Excellent.
LOL!
Thanks.
“Woop De doo, this would only apply to the birth control mandate, an tiny tiny fraction of this monstrocity.”
Nope, they didn’t put a ‘severability’ clause in the law, strike anything and you strike it all.
They didn’t put it in because they knew that it was an all or nothing bill, and would collapse without the mandate.
At the very least it would remove the employer mandate, which also kills the law.
Those NSA/FBI and other files on the SCOTUS justices, that are updated daily for the Whitehouse, must be huge by now.
Amen, it takes no more than an eighth grade education (a real eighth grade education) to realize that the decision that this absurdity is constitutional because the penalty for nonparticipation IS a tax even though those who passed it into law swore it was NOT A TAX is patently ridiculous. If this makes any sense then the whole constitution is useless because the government can force you to do anything including standing on your head in the rain by simply charging a tax for failure to do so. I don’t understand how anyone could take the decision seriously, every lawyer in the country should be up in arms against it but they don’t give a damn as long as they make money.
42 USC § 18115
-
“...a case of people viewing information out of context,
this section of the law applies to issuers of insurance,
not purchasers of insurance...
...this law says is that no one who provides health insurance
may be forced to participate in any federal health insurance program...”
Citizens United was a bad decision.Corporations shouldn’t be given rights that belong to citizens.
No individual, company, business, nonprofit entity, or health insurance issuer offering group or individual health insurance coverage shall be required to participate in any Federal health insurance program created under this Act (or any amendments made by this Act), or in any Federal health insurance program expanded by this Act (or any such amendments), and there shall be no penalty or fine imposed upon any such issuer for choosing not to participate in such programs.
That whole "individual" thing tells a different story. Unless you have a different definition?
I'm going to disagree, Citizens United was about a group of citizens assembling/associating (i.e. incorporating) in order to produce a political publication (a movie, IIRC) — should a group of people be denied the right of free speech that they have individually because they are associated together?
Is that clause severable from the rest?
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