11th Circuit Court Of Appeals Rules That Obamacare's Individual Mandate Is Unconstitutional

Reuters reports:

President Barack Obama's healthcare law suffered a setback Friday when a U.S. appeals court ruled that it was unconstitutional to require all Americans to buy insurance or face a penalty.

The Appeals Court for the 11th Circuit, based in Atlanta, found that Congress exceeded its authority by requiring Americans to buy coverage, but also reversed a lower court decision that threw out the entire healthcare law...

A divided three-judge panel of the appeals court found that it did not pass muster under that clause or under the Congress' power to tax. The administration has said the penalty for not buying healthcare coverage is akin to a tax.

"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," the majority said in its opinion.

That opinion was jointly written by Judges Joel Dubina, who was appointed to the appeals court by Republican President George H.W. Bush, and by Frank Hull, who was appointed by President Bill Clinton, a Democrat.

The opinion of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals concludes:

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.

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.

George Mason Law Professor Ilya Somin writes, "Significantly, Judge Frank Hull, a Clinton appointee has now become the first Democratic-appointed judge to vote to strike down the mandate, balancing Republican Sixth Circuit Judge Jeffrey Sutton who voted to uphold it. The decision further undermines claims that the individual mandate suit is a sure loser that goes against a supposed expert consensus that the mandate is clearly constitutional. It is now extremely likely that the Supreme Court will end up hearing the case, as the Court cannot allow a situation where the mandate is valid in some parts of the country but not in others. I recently opined on the case’s prospects in the Supreme Court here."
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