Legislative Update: Week of June 25th (Special Edition)

Back in late March the Supreme Court of the United States took up the four suits surrounding the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The four major questions that were considered by the court over the three days were:

1.      Is the penalty fee for not complying with insurance mandate considered a tax and if it is not if the Anti-Injunction Act, which does not allow persons to sue the government over taxes, to have jurisdiction over this penalty?

2.      Is the mandate to purchase health insurance unconstitutional?

3.      If the mandate is determined unconstitutional does the rest of the bill still have standing (severability)?

4.      Does the expansion of Medicaid coerce the States to participate in the expansion?

Today the court renders its decisions on these questions, let's review the opinion:

Chief Justice John Roberts delivering
the Court's opinion (courtsey of AP)

The court today issued its opinion combining all of the cases together and rendered its opinion in National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, Chief Justice John Roberts issued the opinion of the court which affirmed some parts of the act and reversed other parts of the act. Lets break down the issues:

Anti-Injunction Act:

The question that was raised whether the penalty imposed for not buying insurance is protected under the Anti-Injunction Act (AIA). The AIA provides protections to the government limiting the ability of someone to sue the government over taxes. The taxes need to be in effect before a suit may be filed for harm by the tax. Arguments were that since this was a penalty and not a tax the people had the ability to sue before the penalty took effect to stop the future harm it could have caused. Chief Justice Roberts along with Justices Ginsberg, Kagen, Sotomayor and Breyer disagreed with that argument says that the government claims for protection under the AIA was upheld due to the next issue.

Individual Mandate:

Arguments against the mandate claimed that the commerce clause of the Constitution did not give Congress the authority to compel the purchase of goods and services and that the ACA compelled the people to purchase health insurance. The government disagreed with this argument and also argued that Congress also had the authority to mandate the purchase of health insurance since the penalty is a tax to those who do not purchase and Congress has the authority to levy taxes under the Constitution.

The majority of the court agreed that the commerce clause of the Constitution did not have the authority to compel the people to purchase a product but the court did uphold the mandate agreeing with the government's second argument that the penalty was a tax and Congress has the authority to levy taxes and that the government is taxing the people either through the purchase of insurance or those choosing the pay the penalty for not purchasing.  Chief Justice Roberts writes,

"The Federal Government does not have the power to order people to buy health insurance. Section 5000A would therefore be unconstitutional if read as a command. The Federal Government does have the power to impose a tax on those without health insurance. Section 5000A is therefore constitutional, because it can reasonably be read as a tax."

Since the Court ruled that this was indeed a tax the arguments for the AIA issue above by those against the ACA fall.

Severability:

This was a non issue due to the mandate being upheld.

Medicaid:

This section is where those who were against the government actually won their arguments with the Justices. Those against the ACA stated that the Government did not have the ability to "bully" States into the Medicaid expansion by stating their entire funding would be taken away providing the opportunity to be coerced into expanding their Medicaid programs. The Government argued that this was a Government program and Congress had the ability to create any condition and terms for the program it saw fit. The Court disagreed with that opinion. The Court opined that the Government could not keep existing Medicaid funding away from the States that choose not the expand their Medicaid program.

Chief Justice Roberts stated, "The threatened loss of over 10 percent of a State's overall budget is economic dragooning that leaved the States with no real option but to acquiesce in the Medicaid expansion." This now leaves the option to the States whether they choose to expand their Medicaid coverage to the population requirements set in the ACA.

At the end the decision was 5-4 with Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Ginsberg, Breyer, Sotomayor and Kagen concurring and Justices Scalia, Kennedy, Alito and Thomas dissenting.

Chief Justice Roberts finished his opinion with this:

"The Framers created a Federal Government of limited powers, and assigned to this Court the duty of enforcing those limits. The Court does so today. But the Court does not express any opinion on the wisdom of the Affordable Care Act. Under the Constitution, that is the judgment is reserved to the people."

For the entire opinion from the court click here.