Media

A federal judge today struck down the central provision of the new health care law—the individual mandate that requires everyone to buy health insurance from private companies—on the grounds that the Commerce Clause cannot make American citizens purchase a product from a private seller. Irrespective of how one feels about the merits of universal health care, this ruling is good news for a number of reasons.

First, it recognizes that our government is limited. One of the most fundamental ideas behind the creation of our federal system was that the federal government did not have the ability to inject itself into every aspect of daily life. That principle has been in dire straights since the US Supreme Court upheld an FDR-era law that forbade the growing of wheat on one’s own farm during the great depression. Wickard relied on the commerce clause to regulate this conduct, arguing that in the aggregate, growing one’s own wheat has an impact of interstate commerce. Of course, in the aggregate, just about anything has an impact on interstate commerce, so up until the 1990s, the expansion of the power of the federal government knew only political limitations.

The interpretation itself is the second reason to welcome this ruling. Again, regardless of whether one believes that health care should be a federal responsibility, the mutilation of the language of the commerce clause to justify unlimited federal jurisdiction is an affront to honest government. The Commerce Clause provides that Congress has power “To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian tribes[.]” US Const Art I, § 8, cl. 3. “Commerce” used to be understood in a very narrow fashion, consisting solely of the actions of buying and selling goods when it occurs across state lines. Reading the commerce clause as allowing regulation of anything that “affects” the economy of the nation or any small part of it, as the Court did in Wickard, is patently absurd. The New Deal and Great Society interpretation of the clause as letting the federal government do anything it wants corrodes the legitimacy of the federal government itself.

Finally, the ruling serves as an important public statement on the proper role of the legislature and the separation of powers. Again, setting aside the merits of government health care, the idea that legislation should be passed, “so that you can find out what is in it,” as then-Speaker Pelosi said last March. Well, the bill was passed, and to the surprise of what I would guess is almost no one with a decent grounding in constitutional law, the idea that the government can force you to purchase something was found to be beyond Congress’ power. Many in favor of the bill analogized it to car insurance, but one can avoid paying car insurance by not driving a car on the public roads. There is no penalty for not buying a car, unlike the penalty assessed for refusing to buy health insurance under the new law. Looking objectively, the healthcare law represented an unprecedented power grab by Congress. It is good for the Republic to remind any branch that its power is limited, no matter which party is in control of any particular branch.