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Friday, June 29, 2012

Supreme Court Upholds Health Care Law


In a dramatic victory for President Barack Obama, the Supreme Court upheld the 2010 health care law Thursday, (June 28, 2012) preserving Obama’s landmark legislative achievement.

The majority opinion was written by Chief Justice John Roberts, who held that the law was a valid exercise of Congress’s power to tax.

Roberts re-framed the debate over health care as a debate over increasing taxes.  Congress, he said, is “increasing taxes” on those who choose to go uninsured.

Here is the link to the full text of the ruling: http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/11pdf/11-393c3a2.pdf    

The 2010 law, the Affordable Care Act, requires non-exempted individuals to maintain a minimum level of health insurance or pay a tax penalty.

The essence of Roberts’ ruling was:

“The Affordable Care Act is constitutional in part and unconstitutional in part,” Roberts wrote.
“The individual mandate cannot be upheld as an exercise of Congress’s power under the Commerce Clause.  That Clause authorizes Congress to regulate interstate commerce, not to order individuals to engage in it.”
But “it is reasonable to construe what Congress has done as increasing taxes on those who have a certain amount of income, but (who) choose to go without health insurance.  Such legislation is within Congress’s power to tax.”

Roberts made a point of noting that he and the other justices “possess neither the expertise nor the prerogative to make policy judgments.  Those decisions are entrusted to our Nation’s elected leaders, who can be thrown out of office if the people disagree with them.  It is not our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices.”

The law, Roberts wrote, “makes going without insurance just another thing the Government taxes, like buying gasoline or earning income.  And if the mandate is in effect just a tax hike on certain taxpayers who do not have health insurance, it may be within Congress’s constitutional power to tax.”

He said, “The question is not whether that is the most natural interpretation of the mandate, but only whether it is a ‘fairly possible’ one.”

He said the Supreme Court precedent is that “every reasonable construction” of a law passed by Congress “must be resorted to, in order to save a statute from unconstitutionality.”

Veteran Supreme Court lawyer Tom Goldstein told NBC’s Pete Williams that “the Affordable Care Act was saved by Chief Justice John Roberts.”  Goldstein said the Obama administration “got the one vote they really needed in Chief Justice John Roberts.”

Obama hailed his victory: “The highest court in the land has now spoken.  We will continue to implement this law and we’ll work together to improve on it where we can.”  But he urged Americans to refrain from re-fighting “the political battles of two years ago” or trying to “go back to the way things were.”

For individuals who choose to not comply with the individual insurance mandate, Congress deliberately chose to make the penalty fairly weak: only $95 for 2014; $325 for 2015; and $695 in 2016.  After 2016, that $695 amount is indexed to the consumer price index.

Congress specifically did not allow the use of liens and seizures of property as methods of enforcing the penalty.  Non-compliance with the mandate is also not subject to criminal or civil penalties under the Tax Code and interest does not accrue for failure to pay the penalty in a timely manner, according to the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation.

NBC’s Pete Williams reported that Roberts reasoned that “there’s no real compulsion here” since those who do not pay the penalty for not having insurance can’t be sent to jail.  “This is one of the scenarios that administration officials had considered that if the court did this they would consider it a big victory.”

In his reaction to the court’s decision, Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney said, “What the court did today was say that Obamacare does not violate the Constitution.  What they did not do was say that Obamacare is good law or that it’s good policy.”  He said the ruling had made it clear “If we want to get rid of Obamacare, we’re going to have to replace President Obama.”

But in a major victory for the states who challenged the law, the court said that the Obama administration cannot coerce states to go along with the Medicaid insurance program for low-income people.  The financial pressure which the federal government puts on the states in the expansion of Medicaid “is a gun to the head,” Roberts wrote.

“A State that opts out of the Affordable Care Act’s expansion in health care coverage thus stands to lose not merely ‘a relatively small percentage’ of its existing Medicaid funding, but all of it.”  Roberts said.  Congress cannot “penalize States that choose not to participate in that new program by taking away their existing Medicaid funding,” Roberts said.

The Medicaid provision is projected to add nearly 30 million more people to the insurance program for low-income Americans – but the court’s decision left states free to opt out of the expansion if they choose.

Source: Tom Curry, msnbc.com National Affairs Writer, June 29, 2012, 7:15am.

Monday, June 4, 2012


Appeals Court: Denying federal benefits to same-sex couples is unconstitutional

A federal appeals court has ruled that the Defense of Marriage Act, a law that denies a host of federal benefits to same-sex married couples, is unconstitutional.

The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston ruled Thursday that the act known as DoMA, which defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman, discriminates against gay couples.

The law was passed in 1996 at a time when it appeared Hawaii would legalize gay marriage.  Since then, many states have instituted their own bans on gay marriage, while eight states have approved it, led by Massachusetts in 2004, and followed by Connecticut, New York, Iowa, New Hampshire, Vermont, Maryland, Washington state and the District of Columbia.  Maryland and Washington’s laws are not yet in effect and may be subject to referendums.

The appeals court agreed with a lower court judge who ruled in 2010 that the law is unconstitutional because it interferes with the right of a state to define marriage and denies married gay couples federal benefits given to heterosexual married couples, including the ability to file joint tax returns.

The 1st Circuit said its ruling wouldn’t be enforced until the U.S. Supreme Court decides the case, meaning that same-sex married couples will not be eligible to receive the economic benefits denied by DoMA until the high court rules.

“We are thrilled that another court – this time, the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals – has ruled that it is unconstitutional to deny respect to the marriages of lesbian and gay couples,” said Camilla Taylor, National Marriage Project Director for Lambda Legal.  “We congratulate our colleagues at GLAD (Gay and Lesbian Advocates & Defenders) for achieving this wonderful victory.”

During arguments before the court last month, a lawyer for gay married couples said the law amounts to “across-the-board disrespect.”  The couples argued that the power to define and regulate marriage had been left to the states for more than 200 years before Congress passed DoMA.

An attorney defending the law argued that Congress had a rational basis for passing it in 1996, when opponents worried that states would be forced to recognize gay marriages performed elsewhere.  The group said Congress wanted to preserve a traditional and uniform definition of marriage and has the power to define terms used to federal statutes to distribute federal benefits.

More than 1,000 benefits in question
Two California federal judges earlier said the act violated constitutional standards.

Judge Claudia Wilken of Oakland ruled May 24 that the law legalized bigotry by withholding more than 1,000 federal benefits – such as joint tax filing, Social Security survivor payments and immigration sponsorship – from gays and lesbians legally married under state law.

Judge Jeffrey White of San Francisco also declared DoMA unconstitutional and ordered the government to provide family insurance coverage to the wife of a lesbian court employee.  White’s ruling has been appealed to the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which will hear the case in September.

President Barack Obama withdrew his administration’s defense of the law in February 2011, saying he considered it unconstitutional, but it is being defended by lawyers hired by House Republican leaders.

On May 9, Obama declared in an interview with ABC News his unequivocal support for gay marriage, becoming the first president to endorse the idea.

Obama said, “I have hesitated on gay marriage in part because I thought that civil unions would be sufficient.”  He added that he “was sensitive to the fact that for a lot of people the word ‘marriage’ was something that invokes very powerful traditions, religious beliefs and so forth.”

Now, he said, “it is important for me personally to go ahead and affirm that same-sex couples should be able to get married.

We here at Davidow, Davidow, Siegel & Stern agree with this decision and will keep you posted on further developments.

Source:   www.msn.com, May 31, 2012, Msnbc.com’s Miranda Leitsinger and Jim Gold and The Associated Press contributed to this report.