Federal Judge Finds ObamaCare Mandate Constitutional

“The trouble, if you think about it, is if Congress has authority to regulate nonactivity then it has the ability to regulate anything,” Rob Muise of the Thomas More Center said, also promising the case he just lost will be repealed. Congress can “tell you to exercise three times a week, to take certain vitamins, to refrain from eating certain foods because, at some point, costs are going to be incurred to the health care market. I find that very troubling when we have a federal government that’s supposed to be of limited, enumerated powers,” he said.

Rob Muise is a lawyer for the Thomas More Center that just lost a case in a Michigan federal court against the Obamacare individual mandate, the first federal court opinion to be issued on the Obamacare mandate issue and the Commerce Clause. A federal court in Michigan just ruled perhaps unsurprisingly, though wrongly, that the Obamacare mandate was in line with the Commerce Clause jurisprudence. The Court repeatedly cited the “substantial economic affects" test. Relying on the wrongheaded "substantial economic affects" test, and actually showing the ever more absurd results it can lead to, the Court ruled that the Obamacare mandate that forces individuals to purchase the product of health insurance under penalty of facing a fine is Constitutional by saying the following: "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." The Commerce Clause deals with "decisions" over "activity"? How can that possibly be? The judge reasoned that Article I Section 8 Clause 3 of the Constitution, which it should be noted is one of the enumerated powers, allows the federal government to regulate that which has substantial economic affects on interstate commerce and therefore reasoned that "[t]he costs of caring for the uninsured who prove unable to pay are shifted to health care providers, to the insured population in the form of higher premiums, to governments, and to taxpayers. The decision whether to purchase insurance or to attempt to pay for health care out of pocket, is plainly economic. These decisions, viewed in the aggregate, have clear and direct impacts on health care providers, taxpayers, and the insured population who ultimately pay for the care provided to those who go without insurance." But Rob Muise, who is a lawyer from the Thomas More Center representing the losing side in this first lower federal court dreadful opinion on the issue, has correctly pointed out why this is nonsensical reasoning even in light of Supreme Court precedent. Now according to one American lower court decision, so long as a federal law can be linked to some economic affect, it can apparently now be Constitutionality regulated by Congress under the Commerce Clause even if that link revolves around a personal economic "decision." This federal judge's argument should not be taken seriously because in essence the reasoning of this Court makes a mockery of the idea of a limited enumeration of powers.

But the problem does in fact lay in wrongly decided Supreme Court precedent itself that was unsurprisingly now used to extend Congress’s power to this new unprecedented level by this judge. As this Court itself wrote as it declared that personal economic decisions can be regulated under the Commerce Clause, 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.” That being said, it is the immediate previous sentence that is unlimited in its scope. Are all “economic decisions” now to be considered the legitimate venue of the federal government under the Commerce Clause? If that is the case, is the Commerce Clause a limit on federal government power at all? It is a mockery of Constitutional government, let alone the Constitution's original meaning, to pretend that the federal government has a blank check to legislate on every issue, even if ever so tenuously or indirectly tied to the economy. As Justice Clarence Thomas actually wrote in his 1995 concurrence in US v. Lopez, and this is certainly correct generally and in the case now being discussed applicable, “Such a formulation of federal power is no test at all: it is a blank check.

Let us all hope other federal courts known to be addressing the same issue, judges bound to read this opinion, are not overly influenced by it, that the appellate courts are not only uninfluenced either but see other lower federal court options ruling rightly, and that the Supreme Court eventually rules correctly over all. That being said, it is clear how the liberal side of the Court will rule, just see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ea5Zgrn5hsI, and so once again it will come down to America awaiting the whims of Anthony Kennedy.
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