08 Oct 2010

Michigan Judge Upholds Health Insurance Mandate

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Michigan federal district Judge George Caram Steeh III upheld the Obamacare individual health insurance purchase mandate in a case challenging the law brought by the conservative Christian Thomas More Law Center.

The Politico story

Steeh’s decision referred to a number of intellectually questionable precedents expanding the Commerce Clause outrageously through the use of casuistical reasoning.

As Judge Steeh not inaccurately observes, a body of precedent law exists sustaining congressional edicts based on the constitutional power to regulate interstate commerce effectively reaching all sorts of persons and activities not in fact engaged in Interstate Commerce.

Post New Deal jurisprudential understanding of the Commerce Clause limitation amounted to the Constitution forbidding congressional interference only in cases of individual persons or activities that could not be in any way, shape or form theoretically causally connected (even negatively) to the national economy or to rational goals of liberal policy by clever and well-educated attorneys.

Such a standard is, of course, completely nugatory and impotent to stop anything at all, and Judge Steeh abashedly alludes to the relatively recent, and distinctly innovative for their era, cases of Morrison and Lopez to establish the contrary. I smiled ironically upon reading that.

The plaintiffs have not opted out of the health care services market because, as living, breathing beings, who do not oppose medical services on religious grounds, they cannot opt out of this market. As inseparable and integral members of the health care services market, plaintiffs have made a choice regarding the method of payment for the services they expect to receive. The government makes the apropos analogy of paying by credit card rather than by check. How participants in the health care services market pay for such services has a documented impact on interstate commerce. Obviously, this market reality forms the rational basis for Congressional action designed to reduce the number of uninsureds.

The Supreme Court has consistently rejected claims that individuals who choose not to engage in commerce thereby place themselves beyond the reach of the Commerce Clause. See, e.g., Raich, 545 U.S. at 30 (rejecting the argument that plaintiffs’ homegrown marijuana was “entirely separated from the market”); Wickard, 317 U.S. at 127, 128 (home-grown wheat “competes with wheat in commerce” and “may forestall resort to the market”); Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States, 379 U.S. 241 (1964) (Commerce Clause allows Congress to regulate decisions not to engage in transactions with persons with whom plaintiff did not wish to deal). Similarly, plaintiffs in this case are participants in the health care services market. They are not outside the market. While plaintiffs describe the Commerce Clause power as reaching economic activity, the government’s characterization of the Commerce Clause reaching economic decisions is more accurate.

Judge Steeh’s decision is a competent and professionally produced example of carefully reasoned liberal statism, and very much represents the Keep-the-Constitution-in-Exile reasoning that will be used to defend Obamacare when the various state lawsuits eventually reach the Supreme Court.

The New Federalism and Rational Basis casuistry will meet again in the nation’s highest court before terribly long.

Ilya Somin, at Volokh, pessimistically believes the mandate is more likely to be upheld than not.

I think we have the better reasoning and a narrow conservative majority on the Court, backed by a national negative consensus on Obamacare. I’m not so sure we are going to lose.

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