Supreme Court goes 0 to 60 on opening oral arguments on PPACA case
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After three days of testimoney, the court will review four issues regarding the legislation often referred to as “Obamacare”: whether the Tax Anti-Injunction Act precludes review of the PPACA until 2014, whether Congress has the authority to require most Americans to purchase health insurance or pay a penalty, whether the individual mandate is severable from the PPACA if deemed unconstitutional, and whether PPACA’s Medicaid expansion is constitutional and whether states can be required to comply with it in order to remain eligible for federal Medicaid funds.
Tackling the Tax Anti-Injunction Act challenge first, the question of ripeness for Department of Health and Human Services v Florida arises whether the individual mandate, which results in a financial penalty if not complied with, cannot be challenged until it has been collected. If upheld, the health insurance mandate wouldn’t be enacted until 2014.
Robert A. Long was invited to the court to argue as a third party that the Anti-Injunction Act bars the litigation of the PPACA. However, despite being invited, that did not stop the court from hitting him with a barrage of questions over the merits of the argument that the Anti-Injunction Act absolves litigation until the penalty fee has been collected.
Diving deep into a bevy of prior federal court decisions and legislative language, the justices bantered back and forth with Long on his case. “Assuming that this is not jurisdictional, what is the parade of horribles that you see occurring if we call this a mandatory claim process rule?” asked Justice Sonya Sotomayor. When Long failed to come up with a sufficient answer for Sotomayor, Justice Antonin Scalia further stated, “If it’s not jurisdictional, what’s going to happen is you are going to have an intelligent federal court deciding whether you are going to make an exception. And there will be no parade of horrible because all federal courts are intelligent.”
Justice Stephen Breyer noted that the language used by Congress regarding PPACA is the word “penalty”; not “tax.” Referring to Long, Breyer stated, “I know you point to certain sentences that talk about taxes within the code and this is not attached to a tax. It is attached to a healthcare requirement.”
While no decision was made on the argument, there have been media speculations that the justices will grant ripeness and issue a decision on the merits in June; the end of the court’s term.
Arguments on the constitutionality of the law’s requirement that most Americans obtain insurance or pay a penalty will be held on Tuesday.
The transcript for Monday’s oral argument can be found on the Supreme Court’s website.