Peter Leibold told HRW that the Commerce Clause argument against the individual mandate is stronger than the States' rights argument against Medicaid expansion, which was made by Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum (R). That is because the federal government is "effectively requiring the purchase of a product in the commercial stream, and the Commerce Clause has not been pushed that far" previously, he said.Yep.
Yet Liberty University tried to challenge on the basis of abortion...one-track minds.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.politico.com/news/stories/1110/45766.html
Yes, and according to the opinion, Liberty U. acknowledged that "failure to purchase health insurance" is itself "conduct," as it is a "decision not to engage in interstate commerce."
ReplyDeleteThe court extrapolated from this not that that decision was an activity substantially related to interstate commerce, but only that Congress had "a rational basis for determining that the 'total incidence' of the class of activity substantially affects interstate commerce."
That is, included within this "class of activity" is a certain class of inactivity as represented by the decision to not purchase -- or act of not purchasing -- insurance, according to the court's deference to Congress's findings.
I'm glad you're around to explain some things for me.
ReplyDeleteThat's kind of you, thanks.
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