Direct Continuation of: The Constitutionality of ObamaCare: Background

When we last left off, Florida v. the United States Department of Health and Human Services had been appealed all the way to the Supreme Court, who would be faced with the final judgement on the constitutionality of ObamaCare, in National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius.

The claim of the respondents (National Federation of Independent Business) was that ObamaCare was unconstitutional because it was regulating economic inactivity, and the claim of the petitioners (Sebelius) was that ObamaCare is constitutional because it is allowed under either (a) the Commerce Clause, (b) the Necessary and Proper / Elastic Clause, (c) Congress’s power to tax, or some combination of the three.

In this essay, we will look at (a) and (b) — the Commerce Clause and Elastic Clause — in depth.

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Follow up to: Why The ObamaCare Mandate Isn’t Infringing Your Freedoms

A fair amount of time ago, back on June 28, 2012, the Supreme Court handed down their official 5-4 decision that ObamaCare, more formally known as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, is constitutional. While some may disagree with this decision, I want to give a summary of the decision they made to help you understand the reasoning and the relevant Constitutional Law.

This essay will lay the background of the Supreme Court case, by discussing how the constitutional issue was treated in the lower court cases, and how the issues led up to the Supreme Court. The next essay will actually begin to look at the issues in depth.

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From the department of things I have so many conversations about I want to respond to them in bulk on my blog: social issues.

It’s a Presidential election year in the United States, and that means we’re treated to another fun and entertaining Republican Primary, in which Republican hopefuls continue to boast about how conservative they social issues. And of course, social issues doesn’t mean actually important issues like poverty, homelessness, education, and disease — it means finding ways to restrict abortion, same-sex marriage, and nowadays even access to contraception. Whee.

Now of course, people have taken to argue back against these social issues, saying things like:

If you think an abortion is immoral, then don’t get an abortion. It’s that simple.

and:

Claiming that someone else’s same-sex marriage is against your religion is like being angry at someone eating a jelly donut because you’re on a diet

Cute, but I think these retorts are part of the problem, and when put back in context reveal a blasé attitude toward the actual claims that social conservatives are making, how wrong these claims are, and how harmful their quest for perceived purity is. And along the way, I’ll go down the social issues rabbit hole and try to point out just how absurd focusing on these social issues are. And no, nothing here is infringing, or even coming close to infringing, religious freedom.

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Follow up to: Why Citizens United v. FEC Isn’t a Huge Deal

I’ve heard a decent amount of buzz recently about the impact of the Citizens United v. FEC Supreme Court case on political advertising and funding, especially with these new-fangled Super PACs. While I’ve moved to distance myself from my earlier claims (two years ago) in “Why Citizens United v. FEC Isn’t a Huge Deal” (it definitely isn’t the worst case in Supreme Court history like some people have said, but time has shown that it’s indeed made some impact), I’m still not on the Citizens United case hate bus, and I’d like to do some further analysis.

To that end, I’d like to publish a case brief I wrote for my “Constitutional Law and Its Practice” class (POSC 207), with intentions to follow this up later in a more detailed analysis of the political ramifications and what could be done instead, if anything. This case brief seeks to understand the rationale behind what the Supreme Court was thinking when they decided this. It’s left in the format we had to submit all case briefs for the class.

Enjoy!

1. Case Name and Citation

Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission
Supreme Court of the United States, 2010
130 S.Ct. 876

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Time to fire up politics again. Also, I’m coming down far more on the conservative side, so this is a real shocker. Oh yeah, and it’s long too. Wheeee! …

Anyways, people have been calling the 2010 Supreme Court Case Citizens United v. The Federal Election Committee a lot of things.

President Barack Obama stated that the decision:

gives the special interests and their lobbyists even more power in Washington – while undermining the influence of average Americans who make small contributions to support their preferred candidates [and that] this ruling strikes at our democracy itself [and] I can’t think of anything more devastating to the public interest.

Barack Obama also elaborated in his State of the Union address, stating that:

Last week, the Supreme Court reversed a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests – including foreign corporations – to spend without limit in our elections. Well I don’t think American elections should be bankrolled by America’s most powerful interests, or worse, by foreign entities.

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