Today, the Sixth Circuit denied an appeal by the Thomas More Law Center and a group of individuals who challenged the individual mandate in the Obama Health Care Law and lost at the district court level. In a split decision, the Court upheld the individual mandate as falling within the power of Congress to regulate interstate commerce, and it ruled that the Constitution does not forbid regulation of “inactivity.” (The opinion can be found here.)
The majority–in an opinion by Judge Martin–accepted the government’s position almost in its entirety. The Court relied, in part, on statistics and reasoned that “[v]irtually everyone will need health care services at some point, including, in the aggregate, those without health insurance.” Furthermore, “individuals receive health care services regardless of whether they can afford the treatment.” Therefore, “[t]he unavoidable need for health care coupled with the obligation to provide treatment make it virtually certain that all individuals will require and receive health care at some point.” Accordingly, the Court concluded that, “although there is no firm, constitutional bar that prohibits Congress from placing regulations on what could be described as inactivity, even if there were it would not impact this case due to the unique aspects of health care that make all individuals active in this market.”
The Court held that the individual mandate is a valid exercise of Congress’s power under the Commerce Clause and affirmed the district court’s decision. (In a separate opinion by Judge Sutton, the Court rejected the argument that the mandate can be sustained as an exercise of the federal government’s taxing power. That means, to date, no court has accepted the taxing power argument.)
Judge Graham dissented and stated that, “[i]f the exercise of power is allowed and the mandate upheld, it is difficult to see what the limits on Congress’s Commerce Clause authority would be. . . . To approve the exercise of power would arm Congress with the authority to force individuals to do whatever it sees fit . . . as long as the regulation concerns an activity or decision that, when aggregated, can be said to have some loose, but-for type of economic connection, which nearly all human activity does. . . . A structural shift of that magnitude can be accomplished legitimately only through constitutional amendment.”
This decision, while meaningful for the Obama administration, merely affirms one federal district court decision that found the individual mandate was constitutional. There still remain two conflicting federal district court decisions in Virginia (one court found the mandate constitution; the other unconstitutional) that the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals must resolve. In addition, in January, a federal district court in Florida found the mandate unconstitutional and struck down the entire law because it did not have a savings clause. The Eleventh Circuit will address the appeal of that decision.
Ultimately, the United States Supreme Court will likely combine these cases and resolve once and for all the issue of whether the individual mandate in the Obama health care law is constitutional.
Tags: health care law, individual mandate, obama care, obama health care, obama health care law, obama individual mandate
