1: The Individual Mandate Violates the Original Meaning of the Constitution
Article 1, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution grants Congress the power “to regulate commerce...among the several states.” The framers and ratifiers of the Constitution understood those words to mean that while congress may regulate commercial activity that crossed state lines, Congress was not allowed to regulate the economic activity that occurred inside each state. As Alexander Hamilton—normally a champion of broad federal power—explained in Federalist 17, the Commerce Clause did not extend congressional authority to “the supervision of agriculture and of other concerns of a similar nature, all those things, in short, which are proper to be provided for by local legislation.” In other words, the Commerce Clause was not a blank check made out to the federal government.
2. The Individual Mandate Rests on an Unbounded and Unprincipled Assertion of Federal Power
Does the Commerce Clause allow Congress to do anything it wants so long as an economic activity is remotely involved? Under the government’s theory of the case, yes, congressional power is essentially unlimited. As the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals remarked in its ruling on the individual mandate:
3. The Individual Mandate Cannot Be Justified Under Existing Supreme Court Precedent
Defenders of the individual mandate will tell you that of course Congress has the power to compel every American to buy health insurance from a private company. “Under an unbroken line of precedents stretching back 70 years,” argues liberal University of California law professor Erwin Chemerinsky, “Congress has the power to regulate activities that, taken cumulatively, have a substantial effect on interstate commerce.”
4. The Individual Mandate Threatens the Foundations of Contract Law
American contract law rests on the principle of mutual assent. If I hold a gun to your head and force you to sign a contract, no court of law will honor that document since I coerced you into signing it. Mutual assent must be present in order for a contract to be valid and binding.
BATR 2020 Election News
