At CNN, Politico, National Review Online’s “The Corner” blog, and at the Susan B. Anthony List website, you can read the developing controversy over some Republican presidential candidates’ refusal to sign the SBA Lists’ “2012 Pro-Life Citizen’s Pledge.” Signers thus far are Bachmann, Gingrich, Pawlenty, Paul, and Santorum. The items on the pledge are: FIRST, […]
Archive | Health Care
An End to ObamaCare Waivers
The Department of Health and Human Services has announced that it will cease issuing waivers from the health care reform law’s requirements in September. From the NYT: No more applications will be accepted after Sept. 22, federal health officials said. Steven B. Larsen, director of the federal Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight, said […]
Indiana and HHS to Fight Over Planned Parenthood Funding
Indiana lawmakers recently enacted legislation barring Planned Parenthood from receiving money under the state’s Medicaid program. Earlier today, the Department of Health and Human Services informed Indiana that this restriction is illegal, and could jeopardize the state’s participation in Medicaid. Indiana does not appear ready to back down, however. The AP reports: In a letter […]
Administration Abandons Tax Injunction Act Defense of Individual Mandate
In a brief filed today with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, the Department of Justice explained it was no longer urging federal courts to dismiss challenges to health care reform’s individual mandate on the grounds that such suits are precluded by the Anti-Injunction Act. SCOTUSBlog’s Lyle Denniston explains: The Anti-Injunction Act, […]
Are Health Care Waivers Political Favors?
The Daily Caller reports that a substantial percentage of recent health care waivers issued by the Department for Health and Human Services have gone to businesses in Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco district — and not just any businesses, but swanky spas, restaurants and nightclubs. Does this story mean that health care waivers are being […]
Sixth Circuit Panel for Health Care Litigation
By Jonathan H. Adler on May 11, 2011 10:33 am in Federalism, Health Care, Individual Mandate, Sixth Circuit
A notice on the website for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit announces that the three-judge panel to hear the appeal in Thomas More Law Center v. Obama, another challenge to the constitutionality of the individual mandate, will consist of Circuit Judges Boyce F. Martin, Jr. and Jeffrey S. Sutton, and District Court […]
My Jurist Article on Why the Individual Health Care Mandate is Unconstitutional
By Ilya Somin on May 4, 2011 11:08 am in Commerce Clause, Federalism, Health Care, Individual Mandate, Necessary and Proper
The Jurist has posted my article on “Why the Individual Health Care Mandate is Unconstitutional.” The format allowed me to lay out the case against all three of the federal government’s rationales for the law more fully than in any previous popular press publication. Here’s an excerpt: Twenty-eight states and several private groups have now […]
Interview with Cato’s Ilya Shapiro on the legal challenges to the new federal health control law
By David Kopel on April 20, 2011 6:18 pm in Commerce Clause, Constitutional Law, Health Care, Individual Mandate, Taxing and Spending Clause
Ilya Shapiro is senior fellow in constitutional studies at the Cato Institute and editor-in-chief of the Cato Supreme Court Review. On Monday, I interviewed him for 39 minutes about Cato’s litigation program on constitutional issues, his traveling the country during the last year to debate the health control law, and the constitutional issues involved in […]
USA Today Refuses to Correct its Misrepresentation of My Statements About the Individual Mandate Litigation
I regret that I must report that USA Today refuses to correct the misrepresentation of my views about the individual mandate litigation that I pointed out in this post. I pointed out the mistake in e-mails to Joan Biskupic, the author of the article in question, and the editors of USA Today. Both refused to […]
Yet More “Life Imitates Rehabilitating Lochner”
Rehabilitating Lochner, Conclusion: The longstanding myth of a wildly activist, reactionary Supreme Court imposing a grossly unpopular laissez-faire ideology on the American people on behalf of large corporate interests—with little concern for precedent, constitutional text, or individual or minority rights—is far removed from historical reality. The academics who invented the prevalent mythology likely sought, consciously […]
Misquoted in USA Today
By Ilya Somin on April 14, 2011 8:33 pm in Federalism, Health Care, Individual Mandate, Media, Press
One of the dangers of commenting on hot-button legal issues is that reporters will sometimes misquote you. That happened to me in today’s front-page USA Today story on the individual mandate litigation by prominent legal reporter Joan Biskupic, which cited me as follows: George Mason University law professor Ilya Somin argued at a recent forum […]
Amherst College Debate on the Individual Mandate
This Tuesday at 7:30 PM, I will be returning to my alma mater, Amherst College, to debate the constitutionality of the Obama health care plan individual mandate. Ilya Shapiro of the Cato Institute will be joining me in arguing that the mandate is unconstitutional. Our opponents will be Akhil Amar of Yale Law School and […]
Court Strikes Down Rule Requiring Pharmacists to Distribute Emergency Contraceptives
The opinion, by an Illinois trial court, is at Morr-Fitz, Inc. v. Blagojevich (Apr. 5, 2011). The rule is 68 Ill. Admin. Code § 1330.500(e)-(h); the court concluded that it violated the Illinois Healthcare Right of Conscience Act, the Illinois Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and the Free Exercise Clause. I’m inclined to be partly skeptical […]
Health insurance is not ‘commerce’
From 1789 until 1944, the Supreme Court adhered to the original understanding of the Constitution that insurance is not “commerce” that is subject to the congressional power to regulate interstate commerce. A 1944 opinion by Justice Black, Southeastern Underwriters, reversed that approach, while claiming to base its opinion on original understanding. In an article in the […]
Justice Kennedy, the Individual Mandate, and the Broccoli Question
In The New Republic Purdue University political science professor Frank J. Colucci, author of Justice Kennedy’s Jurisprudence: The Full and Necessary Meaning of Liberty, ponders whether Justice Kennedy will vote to uphold the individual mandate. Colucci writes: The question of the individual mandate’s constitutionality is closely tied to two competing values that Kennedy believes in deeply: a […]