Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-11-05047/USCOURTS-caDC-11-05047-0/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 890
Nature of Suit: Other Statutory Actions
Cause of Action: 

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United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued September 23, 2011 Decided November 8, 2011

No. 11-5047

SUSAN SEVEN-SKY, ALSO KNOWN AS SUSAN SEVENSKY, ET

AL.,

APPELLANTS

v.

ERIC H. HOLDER, JR., ET AL.,

APPELLEES

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the District of Columbia

(No. 1:10-cv-00950)

Edward L. White III, pro hac vice, argued the cause for

appellants. With him on the briefs were Jay Alan Sekulow,

Colby M. May, Miles Landon Terry, and James M. Henderson

Sr.

David B. Kopel was on the brief for amici curiae

Independence Institute in support of appellants.

Dale L. Wilcox and Michael Bekesha were on the brief for

amicus curiae Judicial Watch, Inc. in support of appellants.

Lawrence J. Joseph was on the brief for amici curiae

USCA Case #11-5047 Document #1340594 Filed: 11/08/2011 Page 1 of 103
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American Physicians & Surgeons, Inc., et al. in support of

appellants.

Paul D. Clement, Erin E. Murphy, Louis F. Hubener,

Deputy Solicitor General, Office of the Attorney General for the

State of Florida, Bill Cobb, Deputy Attorney General for Civil

Litigation, Office of the Attorney General for the State of Texas,

Luther Strange, Attorney General, Office of the Attorney

General for the State of Alabama, Gregory F. Zoeller, Attorney

General, Office of the Attorney General for the State of Indiana,

Derek Schmidt, Attorney General, Office of the Attorney

General for the State of Kansas, William J. Schneider, Attorney

General, Office of the Attorney General for the State of Maine,

Bill Schuette, Attorney General, Office of the Attorney General

for the State of Michigan, Jon Bruning, Attorney General,

Office of the Attorney General for the State of Nebraska, Wayne

Stenehjem, Attorney General, Office of the Attorney General for

the State of North Dakota, Marty J. Jackley, Attorney General,

Office of the Attorney General for the State of South Dakota,

Michael DeWine, Attorney General, Office of the Attorney

General for the State of Ohio, Thomas W. Corbett, Jr., Acting

Attorney General, Office of the Attorney General for the

Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Robert M. McKenna, Attorney

General, Office of the Attorney General for the State of

Washington, and J.B. Van Hollen, Attorney General, Office of

the Attorney General for the State of Wisconsin. Katherine J.

Spohn, Special Counsel to the Attorney General, Office of the

Attorney General for the State of Nebraska, entered an

appearance.

Robert A. Levy, Ilya Shapiro, Hans Bader, Steven J.

Lechner, Timothy Sandefur, Charles J. Cooper, David H.

Thompson, Geoffrey D. Talmon and Brian Koukoutchos were on

the brief for amici curiae Cato Institute, et al. in support of

appellants. 

USCA Case #11-5047 Document #1340594 Filed: 11/08/2011 Page 2 of 103
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Patrick T. Gillen was on the brief for amicus curiae

CatholicVote.org.

Grant M. Lally and Deborah N. Misir were on the brief for

amicus curiae Caesar Rodney Institute in support of appellants.

Beth S. Brinkmann, Deputy Assistant Attorney General,

U.S. Department of Justice, argued the cause for appellees. 

With her on the briefs were Tony West, Assistant Attorney

General, Ronald C. Machen Jr., U.S. Attorney, and Mark B.

Stern, Alisa B. Klein, Samantha L. Chaifetz and Dina B. Mishra,

Attorneys. R. Craig Lawrence, Assistant U.S. Attorney, entered

an appearance. 

Rochelle Bobroff was on the brief for amici curiae

American Association of People with Disabilities, et al. in

support of appellees.

Ian Millhiser was on the brief for amici curiae American

Nurses Association, et al. in support of appellees.

Stacy Canan and Michael Schuster were on the brief for

amicus curiae AARP in support of appellees. 

Marcia D. Greenberger and Melissa Hart were on the brief

for amici curiae The National Women's Law Center, et al. in

support of appellees.

Jeffrey A. Lamken and Robert K. Kry were on the brief for

amici curiae Law Professors Barry Friedman, et al. in support

of appellees. 

Martha Coakley, Attorney General, Office of the Attorney

General for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and Carol

Iancu, Assistant Attorney General, were on the brief for amicus

USCA Case #11-5047 Document #1340594 Filed: 11/08/2011 Page 3 of 103
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curiae Commonwealth of Massachusetts in support of appellees.

Andrew J. Pincus, Charles A. Rothfeld, Michael B.

Kimberly and Paul W. Hughes were on the brief for amici curiae

Constitutional Law Professors in support of appellees.

Elizabeth B. Wydra was on the brief for amicus curiae

Constitutional Accountability Center in support of appellees.

Patrick J. Szymanski, Judith A. Scott, Walter Kamiat, Mark

Schneider, and Scott Kronland were on the brief for amici

curiae Service Employees International Union, et al. in support

of appellees.

Hadrian R. Katz and Matthew A. Eisenstein were on the

brief for amici curiae Economic Scholars in support of

appellees.

Catherine E. Stetson, Dominic F. Perella, Melinda Reid

Hatton, and Jeffrey G. Micklos were on the brief for amici

curiae American Hospital Association, et al. in support of

appellees.

Douglas F. Gansler, Attorney General, Office of the

Attorney for the State of Maryland, John B. Howard Jr., Deputy

Attorney General, Joshua N. Auerbach, Assistant Attorney

General, Kamala D. Harris, Attorney General, Office of the

Attorney General for the State of California, Travis LeBlanc,

Special Assistant Attorney General, George C. Jepsen, Attorney

General, Office of the Attorney General for the State of

Connecticut, Joseph R. Biden, III, Attorney General, Office of

the Attorney General for the State of Delaware, Irvin B. Nathan,

Attorney General, Office of the Attorney General for the District

of Columbia, Todd S. Kim, Solicitor General, David M. Louie,

Attorney General, Office of the Attorney General for the State

USCA Case #11-5047 Document #1340594 Filed: 11/08/2011 Page 4 of 103
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of Hawaii, Tom Miller, Attorney General, Office of the Attorney

General for the State of Iowa, Eric T. Schneiderman, Attorney

General, Office of the Attorney General for the State of New

York, John R. Kroger, Attorney General, Office of the Attorney

General for the State of Oregon, and William H. Sorrell,

Attorney General, Office of the Attorney General for the State

of Vermont, were on the brief for amici curiae State of

Maryland, et al. in support of appellees.

Alan B. Morrison was on the brief for amici curiae

Mortimer Caplin & Sheldon Cohen in support of appellees.

Robin S. Conrad, K. Lee Blalack II, and Brian Boyle were

on the brief for amicus curiae Chamber of Commerce of the

United States of America in support of neither party.

Before: KAVANAUGH, Circuit Judge, and EDWARDS and

SILBERMAN, Senior Circuit Judges.

Opinion for the Court filed by Senior Circuit Judge

SILBERMAN, with whom Senior Circuit Judge EDWARDS

concurs.

Concurring opinion filed by Senior Circuit Judge

EDWARDS.

Opinion dissenting as to jurisdiction and not deciding the

merits filed by Circuit Judge KAVANAUGH.

SILBERMAN, Senior Circuit Judge: The district court

rejected appellants’ challenge to the Patient Protection and

Affordable Care Act. They appeal. Despite questions raised as

to our subject matter jurisdiction, we conclude we have

jurisdiction, and we affirm the district court’s conclusion that

the Act is constitutional.

USCA Case #11-5047 Document #1340594 Filed: 11/08/2011 Page 5 of 103
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I.

Since so much has already been written by our sister

circuits about the issues presented by this case–which will

almost surely be decided by the Supreme Court–we shall be

sparing in adding to the production of paper.

Suffice it to say that the Affordable Care Act sought to

reform our nation’s health insurance and health care delivery

markets with the aims of improving access to those markets and

reducing health care costs and uncompensated care. Other

courts of appeals have described its provisions at length. See

Thomas More Law Ctr. v. Obama, 651 F.3d 529, 534-35 (6th

Cir. 2011); Florida v. U.S. Dep’t of Health and Human Servs.,

648 F.3d 1235, 1249-62 (11th Cir. 2011).

This suit, like others, involves a challenge to the “minimum

essential coverage provision,” which requires all “applicable

individual[s]” to purchase and maintain “minimum essential

coverage”–i.e., required essential health benefits in an insurance

plan–for each month beginning in January 2014. This

requirement is commonly called the “individual mandate.” Any

“taxpayer” who “fails to meet the requirement” must pay a

“shared responsibility payment,” labeled a “penalty,” which will

be calculated by using the lesser of either a percentage of the

taxpayer’s income or the national average premium for the

lowest-level plan providing “minimum essential coverage.”1

 

Congress made specific findings why, in its judgment, the

1

26 U.S.C. § 5000A(a) (individual mandate); id. § 5000A(b)-

(c) (penalty provision). 

USCA Case #11-5047 Document #1340594 Filed: 11/08/2011 Page 6 of 103
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individual mandate regulates commerce.2

 Congress determined

that decisions about whether and when to purchase health

insurance, and how to pay for health care services, are inherently

economic. And Congress found that without the mandate,

uninsured individuals, in the aggregate, would consume costly

health care services and pass on those costs to other market

participants. Without the mandate, in Congress’s view, other

reforms–namely prohibitions on denying health insurance

coverage to individuals with pre-existing medical conditions

(the “guaranteed issue requirement”) or using an individual’s

medical history to justify higher insurance premiums (the

“community rating requirement”)–would increase average

premiums, exacerbate adverse selection problems, and

discourage individuals from obtaining coverage until they were

sick.

Appellants, four United States citizens and federal

taxpayers, seek declaratory and injunctive relief to prevent

various U.S. Government officials and agencies from enforcing

the minimum essential coverage provisions. They argue that the

mandate exceeds Congress’s authority under the Commerce

Clause and substantially burdens appellants Susan Seven-Sky’s

and Charles Edward Lee’s religious exercise, in violation of the

Religious Freedom Restoration Act.3

The district court granted the Government’s motion to

dismiss. It upheld the minimum essential coverage provisions

under the Commerce Clause and the Necessary and Proper

Clause as a regulation of economic activity that substantially

2

These findings are codified at 42 U.S.C. § 18091(a)(1)-(3)

and discussed extensively in other opinions. See Florida, 648 F.3d at

1244-47.

3

42 U.S.C. § 2000bb et seq.

USCA Case #11-5047 Document #1340594 Filed: 11/08/2011 Page 7 of 103
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affects the health insurance and health care markets and as an

essential element of a broader regulatory scheme. Mead v.

Holder, 766 F. Supp. 2d 16, 33-35 (D.D.C. 2011). It also

rejected appellants’ Religious Freedom Restoration Act claim.4

Id. at 42-43. 

Appellants filed a timely appeal. We affirm.

II.

At the outset, we are obliged to consider whether we have

jurisdiction over this case. It is argued by one amicus5

 that the

Anti-Injunction Act–which states, with some exceptions, that

“no suit for the purpose of restraining the assessment or

collection of any tax shall be maintained in any court by any

person”–restrains us from entertaining the merits of this suit.6

Indeed, the Fourth Circuit has recently held as much. See

Liberty Univ., Inc. v. Geithner, No. 10-2347, 2011 WL 3962915,

at *1 (4th Cir. Sept. 8, 2011). According to our sister circuit, no

suits to challenge the individual mandate or the penalty can be

brought until the mandate comes into effect in 2014, plaintiffs

fail to comply, the IRS imposes a penalty, and plaintiffs bring a

refund action against the IRS. See id. at *4. Although both

appellants and the Government–the parties to this case–insist we

do have jurisdiction, we, of course, have an independent duty to

4

We affirm the dismissal of appellants’ Religious Freedom

Restoration Act claim, because we agree with the district court’s

reasoning that appellants failed to allege facts showing that the

mandate will substantially burden their religious exercise. See Mead,

766 F. Supp. 2d at 41-43.

5

See Br. for Amici Curiae Mortimer Caplin & Sheldon Cohen

in Supp. of Appellees and Affirmance. 

6

 26 U.S.C. § 7421(a) (emphasis added).

USCA Case #11-5047 Document #1340594 Filed: 11/08/2011 Page 8 of 103
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examine that question, see Steel Co. v. Citizens for a Better

Env’t, 523 U.S. 83, 95 (1998), and we have previously

recognized that the Anti-Injunction Act is a limitation on our

subject-matter jurisdiction, see Gardner v. United States, 211

F.3d 1305, 1311 (D.C. Cir. 2000). 

The jurisdictional issue brings two interrelated questions. 

First, whether the Anti-Injunction Act itself, by using the words

“any tax,” applies to the shared responsibility payment.

Second–even if the Anti-Injunction Act does not apply with its

own force–does the Affordable Care Act invoke it by stating that

the shared responsibility payment is to be “assessed and

collected in the same manner” as penalties that are subject to the

Anti-Injunction Act. 

The Anti-Injunction Act, a part of the Internal Revenue

Code, only bars pre-enforcement challenges to the assessment

and collection of taxes. As is well known, Congress, in passing

the Affordable Care Act, pointedly rejected proposals to

designate the shared responsibility payment as a “tax,” instead

labeling it a “penalty.”7

 That Congress called numerous other

provisions in the Act “taxes” indicates that its decision to use the

word “penalty” here was deliberate.8 And congressional

findings never suggested that Congress’s purpose was to raise

revenue. The Government estimates the penalty would raise $4

billion, but congressional findings emphasize that the aim of the

shared responsibility payment is to encourage everyone to

7

26 U.S.C. § 5000A(b); H.R. 3962, § 501, 111th Cong.

(2009); H.R. 3200, § 401, 111th Cong. (2009); S. 1796, § 1301, 111th

Cong. (2009); see also Liberty Univ., 2011 WL 3962915 at *24

(Davis, J., dissenting).

8

See Thomas More, 651 F.3d 529, 551 (6th Cir. 2011)

(Sutton, J., concurring) (surveying usage).

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purchase insurance; the goal is universal coverage, not revenues

from penalties.9

 Though the shared responsibility payment

penalty is codified as part of the Internal Revenue Code,

Congress prohibited the IRS from using traditional criminal

enforcement or levying powers to collect the payment.10

Covered persons have a legal obligation to purchase minimum

coverage, but it is rather obvious that this provision’s success

depends, much more than a typical tax obligation, on voluntary

compliance.

The key question, therefore, is whether Congress intended

the term “any tax” in the Anti-Injunction Act to sweep beyond

exactions that Congress designated as “taxes” elsewhere in the

Internal Revenue Code. The Fourth Circuit is of the view that

“any tax” includes any exaction collected by the IRS, even if

Congress called it a “penalty.” Liberty Univ., 2011 WL

3962915 at *6. We disagree. Both the Anti-Injunction Act and

the shared responsibility payment are part of the Internal

Revenue Code. When Congress uses the same word–here,

“tax”–in the same context, we presume Congress intends the

same meaning throughout. See Erlenbaugh v. United States,

409 U.S. 239, 243-44 (1972). And when Congress wants a “tax”

in one statute to include more than the exactions it labels taxes

in other statutes, it says so. For instance, a “tax” under the

Bankruptcy Code means anything that functions like a tax, not

just anything Congress labeled a “tax,” only because Congress

directed that terms used in the Bankruptcy Code shall have

special meanings. United States v. Reorganized CF & I

Fabricators of Utah, Inc., 518 U.S. 213, 219-20 (1996). By

analogy, if Congress says that a sum owed at customs is not a

penalty, that designation controls for purposes of a customs

9

 42 U.S.C. § 18091(a)(2)(A), (C), & (I). 

1026 U.S.C. § 5000A(g)(2).

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jurisdictional statute. See Helwig v. United States, 188 U.S. 605,

610, 613 (1903). 

Nothing we have seen suggests that Congress intended for

“any tax” in the Anti-Injunction Act to include exactions

unrelated to taxes that Congress labeled “penalties.”11 The AntiInjunction Act does not define the word “tax.” But it does not

indicate in any way that the term “tax” can be given a different

meaning than in the rest of the Internal Revenue Code. The only

Supreme Court case to consider the meaning of “any tax” dates

to 1883, and suggested that a “tax” meant anything collected as

a tax–even if collected erroneously or illegally–so long as “it

was claimed by the proper public officers” to be a “tax.” Snyder

v. Marks, 109 U.S. 189, 192 (1883). Since the Government

denies that the shared responsibility payment is a tax, Snyder, at

least, suggests that we should credit the Government. See

Liberty Univ., 2011 WL 3962915 at *31 (Davis, J., dissenting).

Importantly, aside from the Fourth Circuit’s recent decision,

no court has ever held that “any tax” under the Anti-Injunction

Act includes exactions that Congress deliberately called

“penalties.” Bailey v. George, 259 U.S. 16 (1922), and Bailey

v. Drexel Furniture Co. (Child Labor Tax Case), 259 U.S. 20

(1922), two cases upon which the Fourth Circuit relied heavily,

are not to the contrary. In Bailey v. George, the Supreme Court

held that the Anti-Injunction Act barred a pre-enforcement

challenge to the Child Labor Tax, which Congress had expressly

labeled a tax. 259 U.S. at 20. Then, in Child Labor Tax Case,

a refund action, the Supreme Court held that the Child Labor

Tax was so regulatory in function that it ceased to be a “tax” for

constitutional purposes. 259 U.S. at 38. These cases stand for

11The Act also has no legislative history. Bob Jones Univ. v.

Simon, 416 U.S. 725, 736 (1974). 

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the proposition that exactions that Congress intended to enact as

taxes are “tax[es]” within the meaning of the Anti-Injunction

Act, but may not be “taxes” for constitutional purposes.12 See

Liberty Univ., 2011 WL 3962915 at *28 (Davis, J., dissenting). 

They do not address our issue, which raises a quite different

question: whether an exaction that Congress intended as a

“penalty” is also a “tax” within the meaning of the AntiInjunction Act. 

Other parts of the Internal Revenue Code reinforce our view

that Congress did not intend for the Anti-Injunction Act to cover

penalties unconnected to tax liability or enforcement. Taxes and

penalties carry distinct meanings in the Code, and Congress has

been deliberate when it wants certain penalties to be treated as

taxes. See Liberty Univ., 2011 WL 3962915 at *24 (Davis, J.,

dissenting). As we discuss further below, Congress expressly

defined taxes to include penalties for nonpayment of taxes

imposed under Chapter 68, subchapter A and “assessable

penalties” imposed under Chapter 68, subchapter B.13 Congress

understandably treated Chapter 68 penalties as taxes, because,

unlike the shared responsibility payment, they are imposed for

impeding or otherwise failing to comply with tax payment and

reporting obligations. See Thomas More, 651 F.3d at 540; cf.

Mobile Republican Assembly v. United States, 353 F.3d 1357,

12Similarly, Lipke v. Lederer, 259 U.S. 557 (1922), merely

held that the Anti-Injunction Act does not always apply even if

Congress labels an exaction a “tax.” There, Congress made clear, in

the rest of a criminal statute, that it did not really intend the exaction

to be a tax. Id. at 561-62. That is different from our situation, where

Congress repeatedly expressed its intention that the shared

responsibility payment was to be a “penalty.” 

1326 U.S.C. § 6665(a) (stating that “taxes” also refer to

Chapter 68, subchapter A penalties); id. § 6671(a) (stating that “taxes”

also refer to Chapter 68, subchapter B penalties). 

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1362 (11th Cir. 2003) (treating penalties imposed for violating

conditions of non-profit organizations’ tax-exempt status as

“taxes” because those conditions determine whether the

organization is liable for taxes).14 

Granted, the Code also refers to “any tax (including any

interest, additional amounts, additional tax, and assessable

penalties)” imposed by Title 26 when describing the IRS’s

assessment authority. See, e.g., 26 U.S.C. § 6201. The Fourth

Circuit and the dissent reason that because the IRS is

empowered to assess taxes (including assessable penalties), and

because the Anti-Injunction Act bars any suit to restrain the

assessment of taxes, anything codified in the Internal Revenue

Code and assessed by the IRS is subject to the Anti-Injunction

Act. See Liberty Univ., 2011 WL 3962915 at *6, 11. We think

that inference leaps too far. The term “assessable penalties” in

the Code is generally used to refer to Chapter 68, subchapter B

penalties (entitled “Assessable Penalties”), not any type of

penalty. See, e.g., id. § 4083(d)(3)(B); id. § 6671; id. § 6684; id.

§ 6688; id. § 6695. Nothing in this language suggests that

penalties assessed by IRS but unrelated to taxes–as opposed to

interest, additional amounts, additional tax, and assessable

penalties commonly found in Chapter 68, subchapter B–would

fall under this provision. And if this language truly transformed

all penalties into taxes merely because they were codified in the

Tax Code and assessed by the IRS, Congress’s deliberate efforts

to treat the shared responsibility payment as a penalty, not a tax,

14The Fourth Circuit has also held that all premiums due under

the Coal Act–which is outside Chapter 68, subchapter B of the

Code–are “taxes” for purposes of the Anti-Injunction Act, but it

reached that conclusion only after assuming, without analysis, that the

definition of a “tax” under the bankruptcy law is the same as the AntiInjunction Act. In re Leckie Smokeless Coal Co., 99 F.3d 573, 583

(4th Cir. 1996).

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would be inexplicable. See Liberty Univ., 2011 WL 3962915 at

*32-33 (Davis, J., dissenting). 

Our interpretation is also supported by judicial construction

of the Tax Injunction Act, a statute that uses similar language to

the Anti-Injunction Act to bar suits to restrain the assessment or

collection of state taxes. See 28 U.S.C. § 1341 (“The district

courts shall not enjoin, suspend or restrain the assessment, levy

or collection of any tax under State law where a plain, speedy

and efficient remedy may be had in the courts of such State.”);

Enochs v. Williams Packing & Nav. Co., 370 U.S. 1, 6 (1962).

It is well established that Congress used the term “tax” in the

Tax Injunction Act to mean assessments made for the purpose

of raising revenues, not regulatory “penalties” intended to

encourage compliance with a law.15 That distinction is in

keeping with the aim of the Anti-Injunction Act and Tax

Injunction Act, i.e. to avoid federal judicial interference with tax

revenues upon which federal and state budgets depend. See

Nat’l Private Truck Council, Inc. v. Oklahoma Tax Comm’n,

515 U.S. 582, 586 (1995); Williams Packing, 370 U.S. at 7.

* * *

The nature of appellants’ challenge also demonstrates why

15Chamber of Commerce v. Edmonson, 594 F.3d 742, 761-62

(10th Cir. 2010); RTC Commercial Assets Trust 1995-NP3-1 v.

Phoenix Bond & Indem. Co., 169 F.3d 448, 457 (7th Cir. 1999); Ben

Oehrleins and Sons and Daughter, Inc. v. Hennepin Cnty., 115 F.3d

1372, 1382-83 (8th Cir. 1997); Travelers Ins. Co. v. Cuomo, 14 F.3d

708, 713-14 (2d Cir. 1993) (overruled on other grounds). Courts do

not defer to the labels states–as opposed to Congress–bestow on

exactions, because the meaning of a “tax” under the Tax Injunction

Act is a question of federal, not state, law. See Edmonson, 594 F.3d

at 761.

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the Anti-Injunction Act, by its own terms, does not apply to this

suit. Appellants have brought suit for the purpose of enjoining

a regulatory command, the individual mandate, that requires

them to purchase health insurance from private companies,

produces no revenues for the Government, and imposes

obligations independent of the shared responsibility payment. 

They seek injunctive and declaratory relief to prevent anyone

from being subject to the mandate, irrespective of whether they

intend to comply with it, and irrespective of the means Congress

chooses to implement it. The harms appellants allege–the cost

of purchasing health insurance from private companies, and

violation of their religious belief that insurance expresses

skepticism in God’s ability to provide–exist as a result of the

mandate, not the penalty. True, appellants also say that they do

not intend to comply with the mandate, and that the penalty

would be a serious financial burden. But that harm affects only

the limited class of individuals who fail to comply when the

mandate goes into effect. 

The individual mandate and the shared responsibility

payment create different legal obligations, for different

categories of people, at different times. The mandate–described

as the “requirement to maintain minimum essential coverage” in

the statute–imposes a legal obligation on “applicable

individual[s]” to purchase and maintain minimum health care

coverage from an insurance company for each month beginning

January 2014.16 Foreign citizens, illegal aliens, prisoners, and

those who qualify for religious exemptions are not considered

“applicable individual[s].”17 

By contrast, the penalty provisions are not symmetrical with

1626 U.S.C. § 5000A(a).

17Id. § 5000A(d)(2)-(4).

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the mandate. Although some who fail to comply with the

individual mandate must pay a penalty (the “shared

responsibility payment”) to the IRS, others–taxpayers who

cannot afford coverage, or who fall below the filing threshold,

members of Indian tribes, and any applicable individual whom

the Secretary of Health and Human Services deems to have

suffered a hardship–do not.18 Moreover the purchase of health

insurance is not to be directed to the Government, as is true of

taxes, but rather to private insurers; it is only the penalty that

flows to the Government. 

That appellants’ suit centers on the mandate is critical. The

Anti-Injunction Act only bars suits that seek to restrain the IRS’s

assessment and collection of taxes. It has never been applied to

bar suits brought to enjoin regulatory requirements that bear no

relation to tax revenues or enforcement. Indeed, we have held

that the Act does not apply to an IRS regulation that does not, by

its terms, pertain to the assessment or collection of taxes. 

Foodservice and Lodging Inst., Inc. v. Regan, 809 F.2d 842, 846

(D.C. Cir. 1987) (allowing challenge to enjoin an IRS regulation

regarding employers’ reporting of tips).

It has been suggested that Bob Jones University v. Simon,

416 U.S. 725 (1974), and Alexander v. “Americans United”

Inc., 416 U.S. 752 (1974), support the application of the AntiInjunction Act to this case. Those cases involved constitutional

challenges to IRS letter-rulings revoking nonprofit

organizations’ tax-exempt status. In Bob Jones, the petitioner

challenged the constitutionality of an IRS letter-ruling

withdrawing its tax-exempt status by arguing that the ruling’s

true motivation was “to regulate the admissions policies of

18Id. § 5000A(b), (e). Violators will only owe the penalty

starting in April 2015, when it must be enclosed with their tax returns.

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private universities,” not “to protect the revenues.” 416 U.S. at

739. Plaintiffs similarly challenged the constitutionality of

eliminating tax-exempt status for organizations engaged in

political lobbying in “Americans United.” 416 U.S. at 755-57. 

In both cases, plaintiffs argued–superficially similar to our

appellants–that the IRS’s letter-rulings were really regulatory

prohibitions, and that plaintiffs’ object was not to restrain the

assessment and collection of tax revenues, but to ensure that

donors seeking tax deductions would continue to contribute to

their organizations. Id. at 760-61; Bob Jones, 416 U.S. at 738.

The Supreme Court rejected these arguments in both cases. 

It began with the proposition–not at issue here–that plaintiffs

cannot evade the Anti-Injunction Act merely by pleading

constitutional claims. “Americans United,” 416 U.S. at 759-60;

Bob Jones, 416 U.S. at 740-41. More importantly, it

reasoned–and this is the crucial distinction to our case–that the

Anti-Injunction Act applied because challenges to IRS letterrulings revoking tax-exempt status are inextricably linked to the

assessment and collection of taxes. “Americans United,” 416

U.S. at 760-61; Bob Jones, 416 U.S. at 738-40. Plaintiffs’

arguments that their suits were for the purpose of ensuring

contributions, not impeding tax revenues, were also defeated by

plaintiffs’ own pleadings, since the only injuries plaintiffs

identified involved tax liability. “Americans United,” 416 U.S.

at 761; Bob Jones, 416 U.S. at 738-39; cf. Liberty Univ., 2011

WL 3962915 at *14 (describing similar pleadings by plaintiffs

in that case). It does not follow from those cases that plaintiffs

can never bring a pre-enforcement challenge to a discrete

regulatory requirement that imposes obligations unrelated to tax

revenues if Congress, in a separate provision, chooses to tax

some of those who violate it. 

To be sure, it has been held that suits that do not directly

seek to restrain tax assessment or collection are nonetheless

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18

barred if they are directed at the means by which the IRS

achieves those ends. Koin v. Coyle, 402 F.2d 468, 469 (7th Cir.

1968). Accordingly, the Anti-Injunction Act bars suits to

prevent the IRS from using evidence it had allegedly obtained

illegally as the basis for a tax assessment, id.; suits to enjoin IRS

agents from disclosing information in corporate tax returns to

third parties as part of an audit investigation, Kemlon Prods. and

Dev. Co. v. United States, 638 F.2d 1315, 1316, 1318, 1320 (5th

Cir. 1981); suits to enjoin local officials from giving the IRS

information about narcotics traffickers used by the IRS to make

jeopardy assessments, Lewis v. Sandler, 498 F.2d 395, 398-99

(4th Cir. 1974), and suits to enjoin the IRS from using particular

methodologies to calculate tax deficiencies, Campbell v.

Guetersloh, 287 F.2d 878, 879, 880-81 (5th Cir. 1961). But

those cases merely stand for the proposition that the Act bars

suits that interfere with ancillary functions to tax collection. 

Mandating the purchase of health insurance is plainly not such

a function.

* * *

In short, we are not persuaded by the Fourth Circuit’s

reasoning. We think that the Anti-Injunction Act does not, by

its terms, cover the shared responsibility payment under the term

“any tax.” Our dissenting colleague, however, raises another,

more substantial, objection: That Congress affirmatively

intended for the Anti-Injunction Act to apply to the shared

responsibility payment, because the Affordable Care Act directs

that the penalty be “assessed and collected in the same manner

as an assessable penalty under subchapter B of chapter 68.” 26

U.S.C. § 5000A(g)(1). Since penalties included in that

subchapter are “taxes” for purpose of the Anti Injunction Act,

the dissent maintains that the shared responsibility payment can

only be “assessed and collected in the same manner” as those

penaltiesifit, too, is insulated from pre-enforcement challenges. 

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19

The Government argues that “assessed and collected in the

same manner” has a more limited meaning; it does not speak to

the availability of pre-enforcement review. We agree. “As used

in the Internal Revenue Code . . . the term assessment involves

a recording of the amount the taxpayer owes the Government,”

and “is essentially a bookkeeping notation” that is “made by

recording the liability of the taxpayer in the office of the

Secretary.” Hibbs v. Winn, 542 U.S. 88, 100 (2004) (internal

quotation marks and citations omitted). The term “collection”

refers to the IRS’s “actual imposition of a tax against a

plaintiff.” Cohen v. United States, 650 F.3d 717, 726 (D.C. Cir.

2011) (en banc). It begins with notice that a taxpayer is liable

for an unpaid amount and a demand that the taxpayer pay it. 

The IRS ordinarily receives that sum when the taxpayer submits

payment through any accepted means. If the taxpayer continues

to refuse to pay, the IRS can employ various collection methods,

including liens and levies on the taxpayer’s property.19 These

terms, in analogous contexts, have been held to exclude the

timing of challenges. “Assessing and collecting” a penalty “in

the same manner” as a tax, for instance, does not require the

same statute of limitations to apply to each. See, e.g., Sage v.

United States, 908 F.2d 18, 23-25 (5th Cir. 1990). 

The phrase “in the same manner,” which modifies

“assessment and collection,” moreover, is used throughout the

Code to refer to methodology and procedures. For instance, the

“[m]ethod of adjustment” for an adjustment made to correct an

error is to “assess[] and collect[], or refund[] or credit[], the

amount thereof in the same manner as if it were a deficiency.”

26 U.S.C. § 1314(b) (emphasis added). A qualified issuer of

forest conservation bonds is liable for any tax refund amount not

19See 26 U.S.C. § 6303 (notice); id. § 6311 (means of

payment); id. § 6321 (liens); id. § 6331 (levies). 

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20

used for forestry conservation purposes, and “[a]ny such amount

shall be assessed and collected in the same manner as tax

imposed by this chapter, except that subchapter B of chapter 63

(relating to deficiency procedures) shall not apply in respect of

such assessment or collection.” Id. § 54B(h)(3)(A) (emphasis

added). And “[a]ny underpayment of tax by a partner by reason

of failing to comply” with certain requirements “shall be

assessed and collected in the same manner as if such

underpayment were on account of a mathematical or clerical

error.” Id. § 6241(b) (emphasis added). These directions tell the

IRS how to calculate and obtain certain sums, not when to do so. 

See Thomas More, 651 F.3d at 540.

There is more to weaken the dissent’s linguistic analysis. 

Although the Affordable Care Act states that the shared

responsibility payment is to be assessed and collected in the

same manner as an assessable penalty under subchapter B, thus

tracking the language of Chapter 68’s sentence (assessable

penalties “shall be assessed and collected in the same manner as

taxes”), the Affordable Care Act omits the next sentence in

Chapter 68. That sentence reads that “any reference in this title

to ‘tax’ imposed by this title shall be deemed also to refer to the

penalties and liabilities provided by [subchapter B].” 26 U.S.C.

§ 6671(a). The second sentence sweeps broader than the

preceding sentence; it means subchapter B assessable

penalties–which are all directly related to taxes–are to be treated

as taxes for all purposes under the Code. That is why it has

universally been held that the Anti-Injunction Act applies to

various Chapter 68 assessable penalties.20 Similarly, the AntiInjunction Act applies to interest due on taxes because of

20See Botta v. Scanlon, 314 F.2d 392, 393 (2d Cir. 1963)

(surveying cases); see also Souther v. Mihlbachler, 701 F.2d 131, 132

(10th Cir. 1983); Kelly v. Lethert, 362 F.2d 629, 633 (8th Cir. 1966);

Shaw v. United States, 331 F.2d 493, 496 (9th Cir. 1964).

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21

identical language in another section of the Code requiring that

this interest be treated as a tax.21

If penalties were equivalent to taxes for all

purposes–including the application of the Anti-Injunction

Act–the last sentence of section 6671 would be superfluous. It

is a hallowed maxim of statutory interpretation that we must

give effect, if possible, to all words in a statute. See Duncan v.

Walker, 533 U.S. 167, 174 (2001). We do not believe that

Congress somehow inadvertently omitted the last sentence in

6671 when it drafted the cross-reference to Chapter 68

assessable penalties in the shared responsibility payment

provision. Congress often indicates with specificity when it

wants other exactions in the Code to be treated as taxes.22 And

when Congress states that an exaction should be “assessed and

collected in the same manner as a tax,” omits this last sentence,

and still wishes to bar suits to restrain assessment or collection,

it has included specific provisions to do just that.23 Congress’s

deliberate decision not to do so here is telling.

21See Nuttelman v. Vossberg, 753 F.2d 712, 714 (8th Cir.

1985) (interpreting 26 U.S.C. § 6601(e)(1)); Prof’l Eng’r, Inc. v.

United States, 527 F.2d 597, 599 (4th Cir. 1975) (similar).

22See, e.g., 26 U.S.C. § 6601 (interest on tax treated as tax); id.

§ 6242(c)(3)(B) (payments of certain additional liabilities incurred by

partnerships “treated as an underpayment of tax”); id. § 6665

(additions to the tax, additional amounts, and penalties under Chapter

68, subchapter A treated as tax). 

23See, e.g., 26 U.S.C. § 6305(a)-(b) (directing that the

assessment and collection of Social Security-related liabilities should

be “assess[ed] and collect[ed] . . . in the same manner . . . as if such

amount were a tax,” and adding additional provisions expressly

barring “any action . . . brought to restrain or review the assessment

and collection” of those liabilities).

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22

In sum, we read the shared responsibility payment

provision, section 5000A(g)(1), as not implicating the AntiInjunction Act. If we had any doubt about our conclusion, we

think our dissenting colleague’s interpretation is further

foreclosed by two additional considerations. First, Congress, as

we have noted, made the mandate the Affordable Care Act

imposes on covered persons to purchase insurance analytically

and legally separate from the shared responsibility penalty. 

Second, since the Anti-Injunction Act’s obvious purpose is to

protect the Government’s fisc, we think the Government’s

interpretation–that the Act is no bar to pre-enforcement judicial

review–if not a waiver, is at least entitled to deference. 

We think it quite unlikely that Congress intended to

foreclose pre-enforcement judicial review of the mandate even

if Congress intended to delay review of the penalty. The scope

of the legal obligation imposed by the mandate is broader than

the scope of the enforcement mechanism of the penalty. This

divergence illustrates persuasively why the Anti-Injunction Act

would be an awkward fit–and, therefore, quite unlikely to be

what Congress intended. If the Act applied to the mandate,

those subject to the mandate but exempt from the penalty would

either have no judicial relief–because they could never bring a

refund suit–or would be able to sue when others subject to the

penalty could not.24 See South Carolina v. Regan, 465 U.S. 367,

24Whether appellants or anyone else will fall under this

category, as individuals exempted from the penalty because they

cannot afford coverage, cannot be determined without knowing their

future household income. See 26 U.S.C. § 5000A(e)(1)(A). By that

point, of course, appellants may have lost the opportunity to bring a

pre-enforcement challenge to the mandate irrespective of whether they

are allowed to do so under the Anti-Injunction Act. Whether framed

as an issue of ripeness or remedies, the outcome is the same: The

applicability of the Anti-Injunction Act to challenges to the individual

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23

378 (1984) (holding that the Anti-Injunction Act does not apply

“to actions brought by aggrieved parties for whom [Congress]

has not provided an alternative remedy.”). To be sure, that

raises a question whether someone subject to the mandate has

standing to challenge the legality of the mandate if he or she

does not face a penalty. But it is unnecessary to decide that

question to conclude that Congress would be quite reluctant to

endorse such a strange scheme for judicial review.

Secondly, the Government’s determination that the AntiInjunction Act should not be interpreted to bar appellants’ suit

is entitled to deference.25 Cf. Snyder, 109 U.S. at 192. After all,

the Government is the sole beneficiary of the Act, which

facilitates the IRS’s orderly and uninterrupted collection of taxes

and protects IRS collectors from being subject to litigation

before they complete these functions. Bob Jones, 416 U.S. at

736-37. 

Past Supreme Court decisions emphasizing the breadth of

the Government’s authority to determine whether it will be

mandate cannot be conflated with challenges to the minimum essential

coverage penalty. 

25Earlier in this litigation, the Government argued that the

Anti-Injunction Act barred this suit because the shared responsibility

payment is a “tax” under the Act. See Seven-Sky v. Holder, No. 1:10-

cv-00950 at 15-16 (D.D.C. Aug. 20, 2010) (memorandum of law in

support of defendants’ motion to dismiss). The Government has since

abandoned that position. It now concludes that appellants’ suit “poses

no realistic threat of . . . disruption” to the “federal government’s

administration of the Tax Code,” and that the cross-reference to

Chapter 68 assessable penalties in 5000A(g)(1) should not be read as

invoking the Anti-Injunction Act. Fed. Gov’t Supplemental Br. at 3-5,

7, Liberty Univ., Inc. v. Geithner, No. 10-2347 (4th Cir. May 31,

2011). 

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24

subject to pre-enforcement suits underscore why the

Government’s position as to whether something is a “tax” under

the Anti-Injunction Act deserves deference. In Cheatham v.

United States, 92 U.S. 85 (1875), the Court explained the

purpose of the Anti-Injunction Act by stating that “the

government has the right to prescribe the conditions on which it

will subject itself to the judgment of the courts in the collection

of its revenue.” Id. at 89. And in Helvering v. Davis, 301 U.S.

619 (1937), the Court held that the predecessor to the AntiInjunction Act could be waived by the Government in litigation. 

Id. at 639. We acknowledge that Helvering may well be an

anomaly predating more stringent jurisdictional limitations, and

that the Government has disclaimed any explicit waiver of the

Anti-Injunction Act in its recent filings before the Supreme

Court. Still, the Court has recognized that pre-enforcement suits

restraining the assessment or collection of taxes might not be

barred if they are inconsistent with the Act’s purposes. See

Williams Packing, 370 U.S. at 7; see also Bob Jones, 416 U.S.

at 740 (suggesting that if the IRS’s interpretations were without

legal basis or “unrelated to the protection of the revenues,” the

Act might not apply).

The Government’s reading of section 5000A(g)(1), the

shared responsibility payment provision, as not invoking the

Anti-Injunction Act is entitled to weight. That provision, after

all, delegates administration and enforcement powers to the IRS. 

Whether Congress meant to invoke the Anti-Injunction Act

through the cross-reference in the penalty provision is a question

that goes to the timing of the Government’s enforcement

powers. The Government has advanced a perfectly plausible

reading of the statute (indeed, in our view, the better one), and

therefore we accept it. 

III.

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Appellants’ primary argument why the individual mandate

exceeded Congress’s enumerated powers is that Congress

cannot require individuals with no connection to interstate

commerce, and no desire to purchase a product, nonetheless to

do so. Congress’s authority to regulate commerce, they say,

extends only to existing commerce, i.e. only to individuals who

take affirmative acts that bring them into, or substantially affect,

an interstate market, and only for the duration of those activities. 

For this reason, the mandate also cannot be justified under the

Necessary and Proper Clause, because that clause can effectuate

only those powers that Congress actually possesses under the

Commerce Clause, not create new ones. To hold otherwise

would remove any limitations on federal power, at the expense

of state sovereignty. Congress, appellants warn, could force

individuals to buy any product, in any market, with any

penalty–from fines to criminal prosecution–for non-compliance.

The Government counters that the individual mandate is

well within the bounds of congressional power. Congress can

regulate even purely local, intrastate economic behavior so long

as, in the aggregate, it substantially affects interstate commerce. 

The manner in which consumers pay for services in the

interstate health care market is such an example. Because

virtually everyone will, at some point, need health services, no

one is truly inactive, and the health services market is

inextricably intertwined with health insurance. Congress found

that those who do not purchase health insurance, and instead

self-insure, almost inevitably take health care services they

cannot afford. Hospitals, by virtue of federal law and

professional obligation, provide these services, and as a result,

$43 billion in annual costs are shifted to the insured, through

higher premiums. That, in turn, makes health insurance less

affordable and increases the total number of uninsured. 

Therefore, it is argued that Congress rationally concluded that

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26

decisions about how to pay for health care, in the aggregate,

substantially affect interstate commerce. The Government

contends, moreover, that the individual mandate can be upheld

as an essential element of the Affordable Care Act’s broader

reforms, like the guaranteed issue and community rating

requirements, which all agree are within Congress’s power. 

That is because Congress found that absent the mandate, the

guaranteed issue and community rating requirements would lead

individuals to wait to buy insurance until they needed care,

causing higher premiums, again reducing the number of insured,

and destroying the efficacy of Congress’s regulatory scheme.

The Government concedes the novelty of the mandate and

the lack of any doctrinal limiting principles; indeed, at oral

argument, the Government could not identify any mandate to

purchase a product or service in interstate commerce that would

be unconstitutional, at least under the Commerce Clause. But

the Government does stress that the health care market is

factually unique; there are few other markets, it says, where

participation is a virtual certainty, or where declining to buy a

product disproportionately causes a national economic problem. 

A.

As is apparent, appellants have brought a facial challenge

to the individual mandate. Appellants recognize that a facial

challenge theoretically must establish “that no set of

circumstances exists under which the [law] would be valid.” 

United States v. Salerno, 481 U.S. 739, 745 (1987). But unlike

the plaintiffs before the Sixth Circuit, appellants were careful to

avoid conceding there were any valid applications of the law. 

Cf. Thomas More, 651 F.3d at 556, 561-62, 564 (Sutton, J.,

concurring). Instead, appellants’ theory of the Commerce

Clause would invalidate virtually all conceivable applications of

the mandate.

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Since, according to appellants, Congress only has the power

to regulate individuals who are affirmatively acting in ways that

affect a market, and for the duration of their activity, Congress

also categorically lacks authority to compel individuals to

maintain participation in a market into the future. No one

currently active in the health insurance market will necessarily

be active in 2014, when the mandate goes into effect, or remain

active in that market in perpetuity, absent the mandate. Nor do

appellants here concede that Congress could impose a mandate

to require individuals to purchase insurance when they arrive at

a hospital for treatment and maintain that insurance indefinitely. 

The requirement to maintain coverage into the future, under

their theory, dooms the mandate in its entirety. 

To be sure, some applications of the mandate might

conceivably be constitutional even under appellants’ theory–for

instance, if the mandate were limited to compelling those

individuals presently active in the health insurance market to

purchase another month or year of coverage. But viewing those

applications in isolation may be different from considering them

in the context of a law that, under appellants’ theory,

predominantly consists of invalid applications that exceed

Congress’s authority. Though facial challenges are

presumptively disfavored, the Supreme Court nonetheless

invalidated the Gun-Free School Zones Act in toto in United

States v. Lopez, 514 U.S. 549 (1995), even after suggesting there

were circumstances in which the law might have been

constitutionally applied (e.g. if the gun had, in fact, traveled in

interstate commerce). Id. at 561-62, 567. Perhaps facial

invalidation was justified because the Supreme Court assumed

that in practice, most applications of the law would be

unconstitutional, or because differentiating between

constitutional and unconstitutional applications would be too

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difficult.26 But Lopez is silent on this point, as are subsequent

cases. That cautions against assigning dispositive significance

to the issue here, and we do not.

We think we are obliged to confront the gravamen of

appellants’ argument as to the scope of the Commerce Clause.

B.

Appellants’ central objection to the mandate is that

Congress, for the first time, has actually commanded that all

Americans purchase a product, health insurance, that many of

them have never purchased before, never wish to purchase, and

may never need. Appellants do not question that Congress can

regulate the interstate health care and health insurance markets,

or that Congress reasonably could conclude that decisions about

whether to purchase health insurance substantially affect

interstate commerce. The contested issue here is whether the

Government can require an immensely broad group of

people–all Americans, including uninsured persons with no

involvement in the health insurance and health care markets–to

buy health insurance now, based on the mere likelihood that

most will, at some point, need health care, thus virtually

inevitably enter that market, and consequently substantially

affect the health insurance market. Appellants say that Congress

cannot regulate based on such sweeping generalizations. Only

individuals who are voluntarily engaging in an “activity” related

to interstate commerce–not the uninsured, who are

“inactive”–are within the scope of the Commerce Clause.

The mandate, it should be recognized, is indeed somewhat

novel, but so too, for all its elegance, is appellants’ argument. 

26See Richard H. Fallon, Jr., Fact and Fiction About Facial

Challenges, 99 Calif. L. Rev. 915, 945, 959 (2011).

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No Supreme Court case has ever held or implied that Congress’s

Commerce Clause authority is limited to individuals who are

presently engaging in an activity involving, or substantially

affecting, interstate commerce. 

We look first to the text of the Constitution. Article I, § 8,

cl. 3, states: “The Congress shall have Power . . . To regulate

Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States,

and with the Indian Tribes.” (emphasis added). At the time the

Constitution was fashioned, to “regulate” meant, as it does now,

“[t]o adjust by rule or method,” as well as “[t]o direct.”27 To

“direct,” in turn, included “[t]o prescribe certain measure[s]; to

mark out a certain course,” and “[t]o order; to command.”28 In

other words, to “regulate” can mean to require action, and

nothing in the definition appears to limit that power only to

those already active in relation to an interstate market. Nor was

the term “commerce” limited to only existing commerce. There

is therefore no textual support for appellants’ argument. So we

turn to Supreme Court decisions.

The Framers, in using the term “commerce among the

states,” obviously intended to make a distinction between

interstate and local commerce, but Supreme Court jurisprudence

over the last century has largely eroded that distinction. See

Lopez, 514 U.S. at 553-61; id. at 568-75 (Kennedy, J.,

concurring). Today, the only recognized limitations are that (1)

Congress may not regulate non-economic behavior based solely

on an attenuated link to interstate commerce, and (2) Congress

27Samuel Johnson, 2 Dictionary of the English Language 1619

(4th ed. 1773) (reprinted 1978) (emphasis added) (hereinafter

Johnson); see also T. Sheridan, A Complete Dictionary of the English

Language (2d ed.) (1789) (same).

28Johnson 514.

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may not regulate intrastate economic behavior if its aggregate

impact on interstate commerce is negligible. See United States

v. Morrison, 529 U.S. 598, 610, 615-19 (2000); Lopez, 514 U.S.

at 558-61, 566-67. Those limitations are quite inapposite to the

constitutionality of the individual mandate, which certainly is

focused on economic behavior–if only decisions whether or not

to purchase health care insurance or to seek medical care–that

does substantially affect interstate commerce.

To be sure, a number of the Supreme Court’s Commerce

Clause cases have used the word “activity” to describe behavior

that was either regarded as within or without Congress’s

authority.29 But those cases did not purport to limit Congress to

reach only existing activities. They were merely identifying the

relevant conduct in a descriptive way, because the facts of those

cases did not raise the question–presented here–of whether

“inactivity” can also be regulated. See Florida, 648 F.3d at

1286. In short, we do not believe these cases endorse the view

that an existing activity is some kind of touchstone or a

necessary precursor to Commerce Clause regulation.

We think the closest Supreme Court precedent to our case

is Wickard v. Filburn, 317 U.S. 111 (1942). There, a farmer ran

afoul of his allowed wheat acreage under the Agricultural

Adjustment Act of 1938 by growing additional wheat, not for

sale, but to feed his family and his livestock. Id. at 114-15, 118-

19. Filburn argued that the Act was unconstitutional as applied

to him because he was not using the excess wheat for any

activity in the interstate market. The Supreme Court

unanimously rejected this claim. It held that even growing

wheat for personal consumption, not for sale in any market,

could affect the national price, and therefore was within

29See, e.g., Gonzales v. Raich, 545 U.S. 1, 17, 26 (2005);

Morrison, 529 U.S. at 610-13; Lopez, 514 U.S. at 558-61. 

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Congress’s commerce power. Id. at 127-28. This conclusion

was not only because his wheat might be diverted into the

national market, as was recognized in Gonzales v. Raich, 545

U.S. 1, 18-19 (2005). Justice Jackson said even “if we assume

that it is never marketed, it supplies a need of the man who grew

it which would otherwise be reflected by purchases in the open

market. Home-grown wheat in this sense competes with wheat

in commerce. The stimulation of commerce is a use of the

regulatory function quite as definitely as prohibitions or

restrictions thereon.” Wickard, 317 U.S. at 128 (emphasis

added). Justice Jackson thus recognized that the Act “force[d]

some farmers into the market to buy what they could provide for

themselves.” Id. at 129. Although a regulation limited the size

of the farms covered, the logic of the opinion would apply to

force any farmer, no matter how small, into buying wheat in the

open market. See Raich, 545 U.S. at 20. Wickard, therefore,

comes very close to authorizing a mandate similar to ours, at

least indirectly, and the farmer’s “activity” could be as

incidental to the regulation as simply owning a farm.

Indeed, were “activities” of some sort to be required before

the Commerce Clause could be invoked, it would be rather

difficult to define such “activity.” For instance, our drug and

child pornography laws, criminalizing mere possession, have

been upheld no matter how passive the possession, and even if

the owner never actively distributes the contraband, on the

theory that possession makes active trade more likely in the

future.30 And in our situation, as Judge Sutton has cogently

demonstrated, many persons regulated by the mandate would

presumably be legitimately regulated, even if activity was a

precursor, once they sought medical care or health insurance. 

30See Raich, 545 U.S. at 19; United States v. Sullivan, 451

F.3d 884, 891-92 (D.C. Cir. 2006); United States v. Forrest, 429 F.3d

73, 78-79 (4th Cir. 2005).

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32

Thomas More, 651 F.3d at 560-61 (Sutton, J., concurring). The

Supreme Court has repeatedly rejected these kinds of

distinctions in the past–disavowing, for instance, distinctions

between “indirect” and “direct” effects on interstate

commerce–because they were similarly unworkable. See

Wickard, 317 U.S. at 119-20; see also Lopez, 514 U.S. at 569-71

(Kennedy, J., concurring).

Appellants have sought to avoid this logic by asserting that

even if one could be obliged to buy insurance when one sought

medical care, one cannot be obliged to keep it. Although that

argument, as we have noted, avoids the facial challenge

objection, it strikes us as rather unpersuasive on the merits. 

Congress, which would, in our minds, clearly have the power to

impose insurance purchase conditions on persons who appeared

at a hospital for medical services–as rather useless as that would

be–is merely imposing the mandate in reasonable anticipation of

virtually inevitable future transactions in interstate commerce.

* * *

Since appellants cannot find real support for their proposed

rule in either the text of the Constitution or Supreme Court

precedent, they emphasize both the novelty of the mandate and

the lack of a limiting principle. The novelty–assuming Wickard

doesn’t encroach into that claim–is not irrelevant. The Supreme

Court occasionally has treated a particular legislative device’s

lack of historical pedigree as evidence that the device may

exceed Congress’s constitutional bounds.31 But appellants’

proposed constitutional limitation is equally novel–one that only

the Eleventh Circuit has recently–and only partially–endorsed. 

31See, e.g., Free Enter. Fund v. Pub. Co. Accounting Oversight

Bd., 130 S. Ct. 3138, 3159 (2010); Printz v. United States, 521 U.S.

898, 905 (1997). 

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Florida, 648 F.3d at 1285-88. Moreover, the novelty cuts

another way. We are obliged–and this might well be our most

important consideration–to presume that acts of Congress are

constitutional. Morrison, 529 U.S. at 607. Appellants have not

made a clear showing to the contrary. 

We acknowledge some discomfort with the Government’s

failure to advance any clear doctrinal principles limiting

congressional mandates that any American purchase any product

or service in interstate commerce. But to tell the truth, those

limits are not apparent to us, either because the power to require

the entry into commerce is symmetrical with the power to

prohibit or condition commercial behavior, or because we have

not yet perceived a qualitative limitation. That difficulty is

troubling, but not fatal, not least because we are interpreting the

scope of a long-established constitutional power, not

recognizing a new constitutional right. Cf. Caperton v. A.T.

Massey Coal Co., Inc., 129 S. Ct. 2252, 2272 (2009) (Roberts,

C.J., dissenting). It suffices for this case to recognize, as noted

earlier, that the health insurance market is a rather unique one,

both because virtually everyone will enter or affect it, and

because the uninsured inflict a disproportionate harm on the rest

of the market as a result of their later consumption of health care

services.

Appellants’s related argument is that upholding the mandate

would turn the Commerce Clause into a federal police power, at

the expense of state sovereignty. But the distinctions that

separate national and local spheres have been understood as

those between intrastate and interstate commerce, and between

traditional, non-economic areas of state concern and those

involving commerce. Morrison, 529 U.S. at 617-19. Appellants

have not argued that health care and health insurance are

uniquely state concerns, and decades of established federal

legislation in these areas suggest the contrary. See United States

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34

v. South-Eastern Underwriters Ass’n, 322 U.S. 533, 539 (1944);

Florida, 648 F.3d at 1302-03. Nor do we think states’ powers

over health and general welfare make the health care industry a

traditional state concern. Moreover, if Congress can regulate

even instances of purely local conduct that were never intended

for, or entered, an interstate market, we think Congress can also

regulate instances of ostensible inactivity inside a state. The

aggregate effect of that behavior, after all, is just as injurious to

interstate commerce. Finally, appellants’ position would not

preserve state sovereignty. A state that requires all its citizens

to purchase health insurance is making them “active” in the

interstate market; if the state thereby cedes control over its

health care policy to the federal government, its experimentation

is tantamount to a relinquishment of its own power. Thomas

More, 651 F.3d at 561-62 (Sutton, J., concurring); cf. Veazie v.

Moor, 14 How. 568, 574 (1853). 

* * *

Appellants’ view that an individual cannot be subject to

Commerce Clause regulation absent voluntary, affirmative acts

that enter him or her into, or affect, the interstate market

expresses a concern for individual liberty that seems more

redolent of Due Process Clause arguments. But it has no

foundation in the Commerce Clause. The shift to the

“substantial effects” doctrine in the early twentieth century

recognized the reality that national economic problems are often

the result of millions of individuals engaging in behavior that, in

isolation, is seemingly unrelated to interstate commerce. See

Lopez, 514 U.S. at 555-56. That accepted assumption

undermines appellants’ argument; its very premise is that the

magnitude of any one individual’s actions is irrelevant; the only

thing that matters is whether the national problem Congress has

identified is one that substantially affects interstate commerce. 

Indeed, in case after case, a version of appellants’ argument–that

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35

Congress’s power to regulate national economic problems, even

those resulting from the aggregated effects of intrastate activity,

only extends to particular individuals if they have also

affirmatively engaged in interstate commerce–has been rejected

on that basis. See United States v. Wrightwood Dairy Co., 315

U.S. 110, 121 (1942) (surveying cases). Whether any

“particular person . . . is, or is not, also engaged in interstate

commerce,” the Supreme Court expressly held, is a mere

“fortuitous circumstance” that has no bearing on Congress’s

power to regulate an injury to interstate commerce. Id. 

Wickard is very much in that vein. In Wickard, it mattered

not that Filburn’s annual wheat output was trivial in relation to

national production. Nor did it matter that Filburn was being

penalized for behavior that had only the most tenuous impact on

interstate commerce in of itself, since Filburn never intended the

wheat to be used for commercial purposes, never sold it, and

used it only to sustain his home farm. It was also irrelevant that

the wheat quota could compel even those farmers with no

intention of selling any wheat, in any market, to enter the

interstate market. All that mattered were the overall dynamics

of the wheat market–in other words, generalizations about likely,

future economic behavior. If farmers like Filburn all exceeded

their quotas, the mechanics of the wheat market made it

inevitable that the interstate market would be impacted–either by

the likelihood that the high price of wheat Congress was trying

to maintain would induce some unspecified number of farmers

to sell wheat at market after all, or the probability that farmers

who had enough wheat for their own use would stop buying

wheat at market. Either way, these economic forecasts–and not

any affirmative acts by people like Filburn–were enough to

sustain the law. 317 U.S. at 117, 126-28. 

Cases since Wickard have minimized the significance of

any particular individual’s behavior yet further. They have

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36

repeatedly confirmed that the actual impact of any one

individual’s conduct on interstate commerce is immaterial, so

long as a rational basis exists for believing that a congressional

enactment, as a whole, substantially relates to interstate

commerce. Raich, 545 U.S. at 17-19; Lopez, 514 U.S. at 557.

A single individual need not even be engaged in any economic

activity–i.e. not participating in any local or interstate market–so

long as the individual is engaged in some type of behavior that

would undercut a broader economic regulation if left

unregulated. Raich, 545 U.S. at 36 (Scalia, J., concurring). And

a single individual need not even be engaging in the harmful

activity that Congress deems responsible for a national

economic problem; it is enough that in general, most do. Thus,

when Congress finds that organized crime harms interstate

commerce, and that most loan sharks are part of organized

crime, Congress can regulate even those individual loan sharks

who are not part of organized crime. See Perez v. United States,

402 U.S. 146, 147, 153-57 (1971). Similarly, it is irrelevant that

an indeterminate number of healthy, uninsured persons will

never consume health care, and will therefore never affect the

interstate market. Broad regulation is an inherent feature of

Congress’s constitutional authority in this area; to regulate

complex, nationwide economic problems is to necessarily deal

in generalities. Congress reasonably determined that as a class,

the uninsured create market failures; thus, the lack of harm

attributable to any particular uninsured individual, like their lack

of overt participation in a market, is of no consequence.

That a direct requirement for most Americans to purchase

any product or service seems an intrusive exercise of legislative

power surely explains why Congress has not used this authority

before–but that seems to us a political judgment rather than a

recognition of constitutional limitations. It certainly is an

encroachment on individual liberty, but it is no more so than a

command that restaurants or hotels are obliged to serve all

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37

customers regardless of race, that gravely ill individuals cannot

use a substance their doctors described as the only effective

palliative for excruciating pain, or that a farmer cannot grow

enough wheat to support his own family.32 The right to be free

from federal regulation is not absolute, and yields to the

imperative that Congress be free to forge national solutions to

national problems, no matter how local–or seemingly

passive–their individual origins. See Heart of Atlanta Motel,

Inc. v. United States, 379 U.S. 241, 258-59 (1964).

For the foregoing reasons, we affirm the decision of the

district court.

So ordered.

32Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc. v. United States, 379 U.S. 241,

258-59 (1964); Raich, 545 U.S. at 6-7; Wickard, 317 U.S. at 128; see

also Thomas More, 651 F.3d at 557 (Sutton, J., concurring).

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EDWARDS, Senior Circuit Judge, concurring: Congress’s

authority to legislate under the Commerce Clause is not without

limits. If nothing else, there are boundaries that emanate from

the Necessary and Proper Clause, see U.S. Const. art. I, § 8, cl.

18, which serve as principled limitations on Congress’s

authority under the Commerce Clause. As Justice Scalia

explained in his concurrence in Gonzales v. Raich, 545 U.S. 1

(2005), Congress may regulate economic activities that have a

substantial effect on interstate commerce and also enact laws to

make a valid regulation of commerce effective. See id. at

37–39. With respect to the latter category, “[t]he relevant

question is simply whether the means chosen are ‘reasonably

adapted’ to the attainment of a legitimate end under the

commerce power.” Id. at 37 (citation omitted). “[T]he power

to enact laws enabling effective regulation of interstate

commerce can only be exercised in conjunction with

congressional regulation of an interstate market, and it extends

only to those measures necessary to make the interstate

regulation effective.” Id. at 38. Congress’s power to make a

regulation of the interstate market effective “is not a power that

threatens to obliterate the line between ‘what is truly national

and what is truly local.’” Id. (citation omitted).

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KAVANAUGH, Circuit Judge, dissenting as to jurisdiction 

and not deciding the merits:

The Affordable Care Act is unusually significant federal 

legislation that will affect all Americans. One provision of 

the Act requires most Americans to maintain health insurance 

or else pay a tax penalty when they file their annual tax 

returns. That provision – commonly referred to as the 

individual mandate – is codified in the Tax Code and takes 

effect in 2014. The tax penalty for those without health 

insurance is capped at the average price of a health insurance 

plan. The tax penalty is the only sanction for failing to have 

health insurance. And the IRS – and only the IRS – may 

assess, collect, and enforce the tax penalty.

Plaintiffs contend that Congress lacks constitutional 

authority to mandate that citizens purchase health insurance. 

The Government responds that Congress possesses the 

requisite authority under the Commerce and Necessary and 

Proper Clauses of Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution. 

The Government alternatively asserts that this provision 

creates nothing more than a routine tax incentive authorized 

by the Taxing Clause of Article I, Section 8.

For judges, there is a natural and understandable 

inclination to decide these weighty and historic constitutional 

questions. But in my respectful judgment, deciding the 

constitutional issues in this case at this time would contravene 

an important and long-standing federal statute, the AntiInjunction Act, which carefully limits the jurisdiction of 

federal courts over tax-related matters.

Enacted in 1867, the Anti-Injunction Act, with a few 

exceptions, denies courts jurisdiction over pre-enforcement 

suits that would restrain “the assessment or collection of any 

tax.” 26 U.S.C. § 7421(a). The Supreme Court has strictly 

interpreted that Act as a firm bulwark against premature 

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2

judicial interference with tax assessment and collection. As 

the Court has stressed time and again, although the Act may 

seem an inconvenient technicality in the context of a 

particular case, it is essential to the overall system of orderly 

and prompt federal tax administration.

Under the Anti-Injunction Act, a taxpayer seeking to 

challenge a tax law must first pay the disputed tax and then 

bring a refund suit, at which time the courts will consider the 

taxpayer’s legal arguments. Or a taxpayer may raise legal 

arguments in defending against an IRS enforcement action. 

But a taxpayer may not bring a pre-enforcement suit. In this 

case, the individual mandate takes effect in 2014, so taxpayers 

without health insurance must start paying tax penalties on 

their tax returns in 2015. The Anti-Injunction Act means, 

therefore, that a suit challenging the individual mandate 

cannot be entertained until 2015, unless Congress acts before 

then to exempt these suits from the Act.

The Anti-Injunction Act applies here because plaintiffs’ 

pre-enforcement suit, if successful, would prevent the IRS 

from assessing or collecting tax penalties from citizens who 

do not have health insurance. To be sure, the Affordable Care 

Act labels its exaction for failure to have health insurance as a 

tax “penalty” and not as a “tax.” But the Anti-Injunction Act 

still applies. That’s because the Affordable Care Act requires 

that the tax penalty for failure to maintain health insurance 

“be assessed and collected in the same manner as an 

assessable penalty under subchapter B of chapter 68” of the 

Tax Code. 26 U.S.C. § 5000A(g)(1). And penalties under 

subchapter B of chapter 68 in turn must “be assessed and 

collected in the same manner as taxes.” 26 U.S.C. § 6671(a) 

(emphasis added). It follows from those two provisions, 

taken together, that these Affordable Care Act penalties must 

be assessed and collected “in the same manner as taxes.” 

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3

Taxes are insulated from pre-enforcement suits by the AntiInjunction Act. In order for the Affordable Care Act penalties 

to be assessed and collected “in the same manner as taxes,” 

the assessment and collection of these Affordable Care Act 

penalties likewise must be insulated from pre-enforcement 

suits by the Anti-Injunction Act.

That straightforward chain of logic convincingly 

demonstrates that the Anti-Injunction Act poses a 

jurisdictional bar to our deciding this case at this time.

Moreover, there is an alternative and independent reason 

that the Anti-Injunction Act applies here. Section 6201 of the 

Tax Code defines the IRS’s authority for assessment and 

collection of taxes to include assessment and collection of the 

civil penalties in the Tax Code that are assessed by the IRS –

what are statutorily known as “additional amounts,”

“additions to the tax,” and “assessable penalties.” Section 

6201 specifically requires the IRS to assess “all taxes 

(including interest, additional amounts, additions to the tax, 

and assessable penalties) imposed by this title.” 26 U.S.C. 

§ 6201(a); see 26 U.S.C. §§ 6301-6303 (collection). The 

Affordable Care Act imposes a civil “penalty” for failure to 

have health insurance; the penalty is to be “assessed” by the 

IRS; and it is to be assessed “in the same manner as an 

assessable penalty under subchapter B of chapter 68.” The 

Affordable Care Act penalty is therefore an “assessable 

penalty” for purposes of Section 6201. Under Section 6201, it 

is also, then, a tax for purposes of the IRS’s assessment 

authority. The Anti-Injunction Act in turn bars preenforcement suits to restrain assessment or collection of taxes. 

Because Section 6201 classifies the Affordable Care Act 

penalty as a tax for assessment and collection purposes, it 

follows that the Anti-Injunction Act bars pre-enforcement 

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4

suits to restrain the assessment or collection of the Affordable 

Care Act penalty.

That reasoning independently demonstrates that the AntiInjunction Act precludes us from deciding this case at this 

time.

In sidestepping the Anti-Injunction Act, the majority 

opinion relies heavily on the fact that Congress used the word 

“penalty” rather than “tax” in the Affordable Care Act. But 

the majority opinion’s surface appraisal fails to take account 

of the basic text and structure of the Tax Code. The Tax Code 

contains numerous penalties for violations of requirements set 

forth in the Code. Congress often uses the “penalty” label so 

as to have a greater coercive effect on behavior that Congress 

wants to encourage or discourage. But critical for present 

purposes (and overlooked by the majority opinion) is that the 

Tax Code equates tax penalties to taxes for numerous 

administrative purposes, including for assessment and 

collection by the IRS. Here, the text of the Tax Code 

establishes both that the Affordable Care Act penalty must be 

“assessed and collected in the same manner as taxes” (Section 

6671) and that the Affordable Care Act penalty is a “tax” for 

purposes of the IRS’s assessment power (Section 6201). By 

equating tax penalties to taxes for these purposes, each 

provision independently makes clear that these Affordable 

Care Act penalties, like taxes, are insulated from preenforcement suits by the Anti-Injunction Act. 

The Tax Code is never a walk in the park. But the

statutory analysis here leads to a firm conclusion that the 

Anti-Injunction Act bars this suit.

The fact that the Tax Code equates tax penalties to taxes 

for IRS assessment and collection purposes is known by 

Members of Congress who work on tax-related legislation –

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5

in particular, the Members and staff of the Senate Finance 

Committee and the House Ways and Means Committee. 

Those Members and staff are likewise familiar with the AntiInjunction Act. Those Tax Code specialists, and their 

counterparts in the Executive Branch, were deeply involved in 

crafting the Affordable Care Act. Over the years, Congress 

has carved out many exceptions to the Anti-Injunction Act to 

permit pre-enforcement challenges to tax laws, particularly in 

situations where delay would cause disruption or hardship. In 

this Act, moreover, Congress specifically relieved taxpayers 

from certain enforcement mechanisms that the IRS ordinarily 

may employ to enforce tax obligations. But Congress did not 

relieve taxpayers from the Anti-Injunction Act’s bar against 

pre-enforcement suits. We must respect Congress’s decision. 

Unless Congress creates an exception for these Affordable 

Care Act cases – which Congress could still do at any time –

this suit cannot be decided by the federal courts until 2015.

Notwithstanding the text of the Anti-Injunction Act, 

some have argued that compelling prudential considerations 

demand that the courts decide this constitutional issue now. 

But prudential considerations cannot trump the text of a 

statute setting forth limits on a court’s jurisdiction. In any 

event, in my judgment, the relevant prudential considerations 

favor our waiting until 2015.1

 1

 In this court, no States are plaintiffs. We therefore need not 

consider whether the Anti-Injunction Act would apply differently to 

a State’s challenges to the individual mandate. Regardless, States 

may not have standing to challenge the individual mandate, for 

reasons the Fourth Circuit explained. See Virginia v. Sebelius, 656 

F.3d 253 (4th Cir. 2011).

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6

I

The Affordable Care Act was passed by Congress and 

signed into law by President Obama on March 23, 2010. The 

Act initiated a series of major changes to the American health 

insurance and health care markets.

Although the following is an over-simplification, the 

Act’s most important provisions are five: (1) an increase in 

federal spending, including through Medicaid, on health care 

for lower-income families and individuals; (2) the creation of 

state-run “exchanges” designed to help individuals without 

employer-provided or other health insurance obtain insurance 

more easily and cheaply than they can now on the open 

market; (3) a requirement that most employers provide health 

insurance to their employees or pay higher taxes than they 

otherwise would; (4) banning insurers from denying coverage 

or charging higher rates to individuals with pre-existing 

conditions or health problems; and (5) a mandate that most 

citizens maintain health insurance or else pay a tax penalty on 

their tax returns.

Plaintiffs take exception to that last element: the mandate 

that individuals maintain health insurance or else pay a tax 

penalty on their tax returns. Plaintiffs argue that Congress 

lacks authority to impose such a mandatory-purchase 

requirement under the Commerce Clause, the Necessary and 

Proper Clause, or the Taxing Clause, which are the 

constitutional bases cited by the Government to justify the 

mandate. Plaintiffs point out that a federal mandatorypurchase requirement is unprecedented in American history. 

Although some States have imposed similar mandates for 

their citizens to maintain health insurance or auto insurance, 

for example, plaintiffs explain that the Federal Government 

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7

does not possess a general police power over its citizens and 

has not previously employed such mandates.

A

The Tax Code is codified in Title 26 of the United States 

Code. (The terms “Tax Code,” “Internal Revenue Code,” and 

“Title 26” are synonymous.) Title 26 contains 11 subtitles, 

which in turn are subdivided into chapters numbered 1 

through 100.

Within Title 26 is Subtitle D, which is entitled 

“Miscellaneous Excise Taxes.” Within Subtitle D is chapter 

48, which is entitled “Maintenance of Minimum Essential 

Coverage.” Within chapter 48 is Section 5000A, which is 

entitled “Requirement to maintain minimum essential 

coverage” and contains the individual mandate provision at 

issue in this case.

Section 5000A provides in relevant part:

(a) Requirement to maintain minimum essential 

coverage. – An applicable individual shall for each 

month beginning after 2013 ensure that the individual, 

and any dependent of the individual who is an 

applicable individual, is covered under minimum 

essential coverage for such month.

(b) Shared responsibility payment. –

(1) In general. – If a taxpayer who is an applicable 

individual, or an applicable individual for whom the 

taxpayer is liable under paragraph (3), fails to meet the 

requirement of subsection (a) for 1 or more months, 

then, except as provided in subsection (e), there is 

hereby imposed on the taxpayer a penalty with respect 

to such failures in the amount determined under 

subsection (c).

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8

(2) Inclusion with return. – Any penalty imposed by 

this section with respect to any month shall be 

included with a taxpayer’s return under chapter 1 for 

the taxable year which includes such month.

Section 5000A further provides that the amount of the tax 

penalty is capped at the average price of a health insurance 

plan. The section also specifies who is covered and who is 

exempt. For example, lower-income individuals and illegal 

aliens are not required to pay a penalty for failing to have 

health insurance.

Importantly, Section 5000A(g)(1) sets forth how the tax 

penalties will be assessed, collected, and paid:

The penalty provided by this section shall be paid upon 

notice and demand by the Secretary, and except as 

provided in paragraph (2), shall be assessed and collected 

in the same manner as an assessable penalty under 

subchapter B of chapter 68.2

As explained more fully below, the cross-referenced provision 

– subchapter B of chapter 68 – in turn provides that tax 

penalties “shall be assessed and collected in the same manner 

as taxes.” 26 U.S.C. § 6671(a) (emphasis added).

 2

 Section 5000A(g)(1) refers to “paragraph (2)” of Section 

5000A(g). Paragraph (2) precludes the IRS from using some of its 

more aggressive enforcement tools, such as levies, notices of liens, 

or criminal prosecution, when a citizen fails to have health 

insurance and fails to pay the required tax penalty. The IRS’s 

primary enforcement tool under this statute for those who do not 

have health insurance and fail to pay the required penalty consists

of offsets to tax refunds.

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9

To promote compliance with the individual mandate, 

Congress did not enact criminal penalties enforceable by the 

Department of Justice. Nor did Congress impose civil 

penalties enforceable through civil or administrative 

complaints brought by the Department of Justice or the 

Department of Health and Human Services, for example. 

Instead, Congress established a tax penalty that is codified in 

the Tax Code, paid on individual tax returns, and assessed, 

collected, and enforced by the IRS.3

By requiring that the Affordable Care Act penalties be 

assessed and collected in the same manner as taxes, Section 

5000A(g)(1) triggers the threshold question before us: Do we 

have jurisdiction to hear this pre-enforcement suit in light of 

the Anti-Injunction Act, which states that “no suit for the 

purpose of restraining the assessment or collection of any tax 

shall be maintained in any court”?

 And most importantly 

for present purposes, Congress employed cross-references 

making clear that the penalty must be “assessed and collected 

in the same manner as taxes.”

B

Enacted in 1867, the Anti-Injunction Act bars preenforcement challenges to tax laws, subject to certain 

statutory exceptions not relevant here. The Act requires a 

taxpayer who objects to a tax law to first pay the tax and then 

assert his or her legal objections in a suit for refund. See 26 

U.S.C. §§ 7421(a), 7422. Alternatively, a taxpayer may raise 

legal arguments in defense of non-payment during a 

 3

 When I refer in this opinion to the Affordable Care Act 

penalties, I am referring only to the penalty in Section 5000A for 

failure to maintain health insurance. This case does not call upon 

us to examine the various other taxes and penalties imposed by the 

wide-ranging Affordable Care Act.

USCA Case #11-5047 Document #1340594 Filed: 11/08/2011 Page 47 of 103
10

deficiency or enforcement proceeding. But a taxpayer may 

not bring a pre-enforcement suit.

As legal challenges to the Affordable Care Act’s 

individual mandate first popped up in district courts around 

the country, the Executive Branch initially took the position 

that the suits were all barred by the Anti-Injunction Act. 

Indeed, by my count, the Executive Branch told 10 separate 

district courts that the Anti-Injunction Act barred these cases. 

The Executive Branch argued that the courts could not decide 

the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act’s individual 

mandate until 2015 (in tax refund or enforcement suits after 

the mandate has taken effect).

The Executive Branch later changed its mind about the 

Anti-Injunction Act, however, presumably because of an 

understandable policy desire to have courts resolve the 

constitutional question about the individual mandate sooner 

rather than later.

That said, courts cannot avoid the Anti-Injunction Act. 

As the Supreme Court has long and repeatedly held, the AntiInjunction Act is jurisdictional. Jurisdiction goes to a court’s 

authority to decide a case, and courts must consider 

jurisdictional issues even when the defendant does not raise

them. See Arbaugh v. Y & H Corp., 546 U.S. 500, 506-07

(2006).4

 4

 Both sides before us want this case decided now and contend

that the Anti-Injunction Act does not bar this suit. The amicus brief 

of former IRS Commissioners Mortimer Caplin and Sheldon 

Cohen, submitted by able counsel Alan Morrison, cogently argued 

the opposite position. The Court is grateful to amici and counsel 

for their assistance.

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11

Because the Anti-Injunction Act is jurisdictional, courts 

must apply the Act even when the Executive Branch 

affirmatively waives or does not assert it, and even when the 

parties jointly ask the courts to decide the relevant merits 

issues immediately. See Enochs v. Williams Packing & 

Navigation Co., 370 U.S. 1, 5 (1962) (“The object of 

§ 7421(a) is to withdraw jurisdiction from the state and 

federal courts to entertain suits seeking injunctions 

prohibiting the collection of federal taxes.”); id. at 7 

(“Otherwise, the District Court is without jurisdiction, and the 

complaint must be dismissed.”).

The text of the Anti-Injunction Act manifests its 

jurisdictional status. The Act says that “no suit for the 

purpose of restraining the assessment or collection of any tax

shall be maintained in any court.” As the Supreme Court has 

explained, statutes like the Anti-Injunction Act that govern “a 

court’s adjudicatory capacity” or that “speak to the power of 

the court rather than to the rights or obligations of the parties” 

are jurisdictional. See Henderson ex rel. Henderson v. 

Shinseki, 131 S. Ct. 1197, 1202 (2011); Reed Elsevier, Inc. v. 

Muchnick, 130 S. Ct. 1237, 1243 (2010) (citation and internal 

quotation marks omitted).

5

Moreover, when “a long line of this Court’s decisions left 

undisturbed by Congress has treated a similar requirement as 

jurisdictional, we will presume that Congress intended to 

follow that course.” Henderson, 131 S. Ct. at 1203 (citation 

 5

 In recent years, the Court has carefully analyzed whether 

certain provisions governing a lawsuit’s timing relate to claims 

processing rather than jurisdiction. See, e.g., Bowles v. Russell, 551 

U.S. 205 (2007); Eberhart v. United States, 546 U.S. 12 (2005); 

Kontrick v. Ryan, 540 U.S. 443 (2004). In so doing, the Court has 

reiterated that statutes like the Anti-Injunction Act that speak to the 

power of the court remain jurisdictional.

USCA Case #11-5047 Document #1340594 Filed: 11/08/2011 Page 49 of 103
12

and internal quotation marks omitted). That interpretive 

principle certainly applies here: Since the Anti-Injunction 

Act’s enactment in 1867, the Supreme Court has consistently

ruled that the Act is jurisdictional. See Jefferson County v. 

Acker, 527 U.S. 423, 434 (1999) (“The federal statute 

Congress had in plain view was an 1867 measure depriving 

courts of jurisdiction over suits brought ‘for the purpose of 

restraining the assessment or collection’ of any federal tax.”); 

Bob Jones Univ. v. Simon, 416 U.S. 725, 749-50 (1974) 

(affirming Fourth Circuit’s holding that the District Court 

lacked jurisdiction under the Anti-Injunction Act); Enochs v. 

Williams Packing, 370 U.S. at 5 (“The object of § 7421(a) is 

to withdraw jurisdiction from the state and federal courts to 

entertain suits seeking injunctions prohibiting the collection 

of federal taxes.”); Dodge v. Osborn, 240 U.S. 118, 119, 122 

(1916) (affirming dismissal of suit to enjoin assessment and 

collection of taxes on jurisdictional grounds); Brushaber v. 

Union Pacific Railroad Co., 240 U.S. 1, 10 (1916) (discussing 

inapplicability of the Anti-Injunction Act in order to “put out 

of the way a question of jurisdiction”); see also Snyder v. 

Marks, 109 U.S. 189, 194 (1883) (referring to the 

“government” and not the Executive Branch alone in saying 

that the Anti-Injunction Act was “enacted under the right 

belonging to the government to prescribe the conditions on 

which it would subject itself to the judgment of the courts in

the collection of its revenues”); Cheatham v. United States, 92 

U.S. 85, 88-89 (1876) (same).

6

 6

 This Court has also recognized the jurisdictional status of the 

Act. See, e.g., Gardner v. United States, 211 F.3d 1305, 1311 

(D.C. Cir. 2000) (“The District Court must dismiss for lack of 

subject matter jurisdiction any suit that does not fall within one of 

the exceptions to the Anti-Injunction Act.”); Nat’l Taxpayers 

Union, Inc. v. United States, 68 F.3d 1428, 1435 (D.C. Cir. 1995) 

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13

What is more, the Executive Branch itself agrees that the 

Anti-Injunction Act is jurisdictional. It is true that the 

Executive Branch now argues that the Act does not bar suits 

involving the tax penalties at issue in this case. But the 

Executive Branch has not suggested that the Court can skip 

the Anti-Injunction Act question altogether and proceed 

directly to the Commerce and Taxing Clause issues. Indeed, 

the Executive Branch has expressly rejected that proposition 

and has recently reaffirmed its position that the AntiInjunction Act is jurisdictional. See Reply Brief for United 

States at 2-3, Dep’t of Health & Human Services v. Florida, 

No. 11-398 (U.S. Oct. 26, 2011).

The jurisdictional status of the Anti-Injunction Act 

reflects the Constitution’s separation of powers in operation. 

Under the Constitution, Congress possesses the power to tax 

and spend, as well as the power of the purse over 

appropriations of money. Congress zealously guards those 

prerogatives. Here, Congress has not afforded discretion to 

the Executive Branch to waive or forfeit the Anti-Injunction 

Act’s bar with respect to the assessment and collection of 

taxes. Rather, by making the Anti-Injunction Act 

jurisdictional, Congress has commanded courts to abide by 

the Act even when the Executive Branch might not assert it. 

 

(same). Indeed, every court of appeals has found the Act 

jurisdictional.

The Supreme Court has consistently held that the related State 

Tax Injunction Act, 28 U.S.C. § 1341, is likewise jurisdictional. 

See Levin v. Commerce Energy, Inc., 130 S. Ct. 2323, 2335 n.10 

(2010) (“This Court and others have continued to regard the Act as 

jurisdictional.”); Hibbs v. Winn, 542 U.S. 88, 107 (2004) (TIA is a 

“jurisdictional bar”); Arkansas v. Farm Credit Services of Central 

Arkansas, 520 U.S. 821, 823 (1997) (same); California v. Grace 

Brethren Church, 457 U.S. 393, 396 (1982) (TIA “deprived the 

District Court of jurisdiction to hear these challenges”).

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14

Congress has thereby ensured that the flow of revenue is not 

interrupted by litigation.

Therefore, even when the Executive Branch does not 

assert or affirmatively tries to waive the Anti-Injunction Act, 

we cannot overlook it. To do otherwise would contravene the 

basic separation of powers tenets that underlie jurisdictional 

principles. When Congress has established a jurisdictional 

limit on the courts’ power, especially in cases involving 

monies due to the Federal Government, it would be

inconsistent with our constitutional structure for a court to 

grant the Executive Branch authority to waive or forfeit that 

jurisdictional limitation.

In a drive-by attempt to crack the solid wall of precedent

holding that the Anti-Injunction Act is jurisdictional, some 

have cited Helvering v. Davis, 301 U.S. 619, 639-40 (1937). 

But that case involved a suit by a shareholder against a private 

corporation, not against the Government. The case shows 

simply that the Anti-Injunction Act does not necessarily apply 

in private litigation between a corporation and its 

shareholders. See Brief for United States at 29 n.18, 

Alexander v. “Americans United” Inc., 416 U.S. 752 (1974) 

(No. 72-1371) (similarly describing Helvering v. Davis).7

 7

 On other occasions prior to Helvering v. Davis, the Court 

likewise held that the Anti-Injunction Act did not pose a 

jurisdictional bar to private litigation between a shareholder and a 

corporation. See Brushaber, 240 U.S. at 10; Pollock v. Farmers’ 

Loan & Trust Co., 157 U.S. 429, 554 (1895).

 

That scenario obviously does not encompass this case. In any 

event, even if this jurisdictional bar were relaxed when the 

Executive Branch affirmatively waived the Act, the Executive 

Branch has recently reiterated to the Supreme Court that it has 

not asserted, and will not assert, any Helvering v. Davis-based 

waiver in these cases. See Reply Brief for United States at 6, 

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15

Dep’t of Health & Human Services v. Florida, No. 11-398. 

As revealed by the many Supreme Court cases before and 

since that have described the Anti-Injunction Act as 

jurisdictional, the Court’s 1937 Helvering v. Davis decision

did not undermine the jurisdictional status of the Act.

The majority opinion nominally acknowledges that we 

must address the Anti-Injunction Act but says we should defer 

to the Executive Branch’s analysis of why the Act does not 

apply. The majority opinion cites no relevant authority 

suggesting that courts should defer to the Executive Branch’s 

interpretation of jurisdictional statutes such as the AntiInjunction Act. Not even the Executive Branch has argued 

that it should receive such deference. The majority opinion’s 

approach appears to be nothing more than a roundabout way 

of saying that courts can essentially pass over the AntiInjunction Act when the Executive Branch claims the Act 

does not bar a suit. That approach is functionally equivalent 

to saying that the Act is not jurisdictional. But that’s 

incorrect. We must independently analyze the Act, and we 

cannot just defer to the Executive’s interpretation of it.

In sum, the Anti-Injunction Act is jurisdictional. The text 

of the Act speaks to the power of the courts, which means it is 

jurisdictional. And the Supreme Court has repeatedly held 

that the Act is jurisdictional. We therefore must address the 

Anti-Injunction Act.

8

 8

 The Supreme Court has held that the Anti-Injunction Act 

does not apply in cases where the Government’s argument in 

support of the tax is frivolous. See Enochs v. Williams Packing, 

370 U.S. at 7; Bob Jones, 416 U.S. at 745. The Supreme Court has 

also made clear that the Anti-Injunction Act applies to preenforcement suits only where there is an adequate alternative 

remedy, such as a refund suit. See South Carolina v. Regan, 465 

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II

A

To determine whether the Anti-Injunction Act bars this 

suit at this time, we start with the text of the Act:

Except as provided in sections 6015(e), 6212(a) and (c), 

6213(a), 6225(b), 6246(b), 6330(e)(1), 6331(i), 6672(c), 

6694(c), and 7426(a) and (b)(1), 7429(b), and 7436, no 

suit for the purpose of restraining the assessment or 

collection of any tax shall be maintained in any court 

by any person, whether or not such person is the person 

against whom such tax was assessed.

26 U.S.C. § 7421(a) (emphasis added). The Supreme Court 

has repeatedly held that the Act bars pre-enforcement 

challenges to tax laws. The Court has interpreted “the 

principal purpose of this language to be the protection of the 

Government’s need to assess and collect taxes as 

expeditiously as possible with a minimum of pre-enforcement 

judicial interference, and to require that the legal right to the 

 

U.S. 367, 381 (1984). Here, the Government’s position on the 

constitutional issue is obviously not frivolous, and a tax refund or 

enforcement suit is available to litigate the constitutional claims. 

Plaintiffs do not mount any meaningful contention otherwise.

I bring that point up now because some have suggested that the 

existence of those “exceptions” to the Anti-Injunction Act 

undermines the conclusion that it is jurisdictional. That suggestion

reflects a misunderstanding of the concept of jurisdiction. Courts 

must consider a jurisdictional statute even when not raised. But the 

status of a statute as jurisdictional does not disable the courts from 

interpreting the statute and Congress’s intent by means of the usual 

tools of statutory construction. See, e.g., id. (“the Act was intended 

to apply only when Congress has provided an alternative avenue for 

an aggrieved party to litigate its claims on its own behalf”).

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17

disputed sums be determined in a suit for refund.” Bob Jones 

Univ. v. Simon, 416 U.S. 725, 736 (1974) (internal quotation 

marks omitted).9

 By preventing pre-enforcement suits, the 

Act assures the United States of “prompt collection of its 

lawful revenue.” Enochs v. Williams Packing & Navigation 

Co., 370 U.S. 1, 7 (1962). A “collateral objective” of the Act, 

the Court has said, is “protection of the collector from 

litigation pending a suit for refund.” Bob Jones, 416 U.S. at 

737 (citation and internal quotation marks omitted).

10

Of course, the exaction in this particular case is 

statutorily labeled as a Tax Code “penalty,” not a “tax.” Does 

the Anti-Injunction Act still apply? Yes, as we learn from a 

straightforward reading of the cross-references in the relevant 

statutory provisions. (I caution the reader that some of the 

following is not for the faint of heart.)

The majority opinion places heavy rhetorical reliance on 

the fact that Congress labeled the individual mandate 

provision as a “penalty” and not a “tax.” That is a red 

herring. Congress often chooses the label “penalty” instead of 

“tax” because the “penalty” label suggests violation of a legal 

rule and thus has a more powerful effect in altering 

 9

 As an alternative to the refund suit, a resistant taxpayer who 

does not pay a required tax or penalty may face an IRS enforcement 

action seeking to collect the unpaid taxes or penalties. In those 

proceedings, the taxpayer generally may raise constitutional or 

statutory arguments as defenses to the underlying payment 

obligation.

10 Federal law not only bars pre-enforcement suits to enjoin 

the assessment or collection of taxes, but also bars pre-enforcement 

suits seeking declaratory judgments “with respect to Federal taxes.” 

28 U.S.C. § 2201(a). In Bob Jones, the Supreme Court held that 

“the federal tax exception to the Declaratory Judgment Act is at 

least as broad as the Anti-Injunction Act.” 416 U.S. at 733 n.7.

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underlying behavior that Congress wants to encourage or 

discourage.11

At the same time, the Tax Code is loaded with provisions 

that treat those Tax Code penalties as taxes for various 

administrative purposes, including for assessment, collection, 

and payment. See, e.g., 26 U.S.C. §§ 6665(a), 6671(a).

 Congress thus has created numerous Tax Code 

civil penalties that apply when a taxpayer fails to comply with 

legal requirements set forth in the Code. See, e.g., 26 U.S.C. 

§ 527(j)(1) (penalty for failure of political organization to 

make required disclosures); 26 U.S.C. § 6672 (penalty for 

willful failure to meet requirement to collect, truthfully 

account for, and pay over tax); 26 U.S.C. § 6723 (penalty for 

failure to make timely report of information). 

12

 11 See, e.g., OFFICE OF TAX POLICY, DEP’T OF THE 

TREASURY, REPORT TO THE CONGRESS ON PENALTY AND 

INTEREST PROVISIONS OF THE INTERNAL REVENUE CODE 36 

(1999) (“[P]enalties clearly signal that noncompliance is not 

acceptable behavior. . . . In establishing social norms and 

expectations, subjecting the noncompliant behavior to any penalty 

may be as important as the exact level of the penalty . . . .”); EXEC.

TASK FORCE FOR THE COMMISSIONER’S PENALTY STUDY, REPORT 

ON CIVIL TAX PENALTIES at II-4 (1989) (penalty is adverse 

consequence for failure to comply with a rule); id. at III-1

(“Penalties as a consequence of violating a standard of behavior 

remind taxpayers of their duty.”); id. at X-1 (“Penalties are a tool 

for change.”).

 The 

majority opinion’s fixation on the “penalty” label causes it to 

neglect the basic text and structure of the Tax Code. The 

question here cannot be resolved without examining whether 

this is one of the places in the Tax Code that requires tax 

12 Professor Bittker stated: “Virtually all civil penalties are 

assessed, collected, and subject to statutes of limitations in the same 

manner as taxes.” BORIS I. BITTKER ET AL., FEDERAL INCOME 

TAXATION OF INDIVIDUALS ¶ 50.03 (3d ed. 2002). Assessment is 

the actual recording of the tax by the IRS. See 26 U.S.C. § 6203.

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“penalties” to be treated as “taxes.” Contrary to the 

suggestion in the majority opinion, the fact that the exaction 

here is labeled as a “penalty” only begins the Anti-Injunction 

Act analysis; it does not end it. 

To begin, all agree that the Anti-Injunction Act would bar

this suit if the individual mandate provision of the Affordable 

Care Act were either (i) labeled as a “tax” or (ii) labeled as a 

“penalty” but codified in chapter 68 subchapter B of the Tax 

Code. Subchapter B of chapter 68 is entitled “Assessable 

Penalties.” Section 6671 provides that chapter 68 subchapter 

B penalties are to be “assessed and collected in the same 

manner as taxes.”

The analytical question in this case arises because the 

exaction associated with the individual mandate of the 

Affordable Care Act is labeled as a “penalty” but is codified 

not in chapter 68 of the Tax Code, but rather in chapter 48 of 

Subtitle D, which is entitled “Miscellaneous Excise Taxes.”13

 13 It appears that Congress was of two minds about whether 

this exaction should be called an “excise tax” and placed in chapter 

48 of Subtitle D, which is entitled “Miscellaneous Excise Taxes,” 

or called a penalty and placed in chapter 68 subchapter B, which is 

entitled “Assessable Penalties.” See STAFF OF JOINT COMMITTEE 

ON TAXATION, JCX-27-10, ERRATA FOR JCX-18-10, at 2 (2010) 

(the Section 5000A “penalty is an excise tax”). Congress ended up 

placing it in chapter 48 of Subtitle D but calling it a penalty, crossreferencing chapter 68 subchapter B, and providing that the penalty 

must be assessed and collected by the IRS in the same manner as 

taxes. That untidiness might have been cleaned up had there been a 

House-Senate conference on this legislation. Some extraordinary 

electoral circumstances short-circuited that process. But it is 

telling, in any event, that both (i) excise taxes in chapter 48 of 

Subtitle D and (ii) assessable penalties in chapter 68 subchapter B 

are conceded by all parties to be subject to the Anti-Injunction Act. 

It would be quite odd – structurally speaking – to conclude that 

 

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For that reason, some have been misled into assuming that the 

Anti-Injunction Act does not apply to the Affordable Care 

Act’s penalty for failure to have health insurance. That is a 

mistake, however, because the Affordable Care Act’s 

individual mandate provision cross-references chapter 68. In 

particular, Section 5000A provides that the Affordable Care 

Act’s penalties for failing to have health insurance must be 

assessed and collected in the same manner as chapter 68 

subchapter B penalties. Those chapter 68 subchapter B 

penalties in turn must be assessed and collected in the same 

manner as taxes.

The relevant language of the Affordable Care Act states:

The penalty provided by this section shall be paid upon 

notice and demand by the Secretary, and except as 

provided in paragraph (2), shall be assessed and 

collected in the same manner as an assessable penalty 

under subchapter B of chapter 68.

26 U.S.C. § 5000A(g)(1) (emphasis added). The crossreferenced provision – chapter 68 subchapter B – in turn 

states in relevant part:

The penalties and liabilities provided by this 

subchapter shall be paid upon notice and demand by the 

Secretary, and shall be assessed and collected in the 

same manner as taxes. Except as otherwise provided, 

any reference in this title to “tax” imposed by this title 

shall be deemed also to refer to the penalties and 

liabilities provided by this subchapter.

26 U.S.C. § 6671(a) (emphasis added).

 

because the individual mandate provision is a mix of both, suddenly 

the Anti-Injunction Act does not apply.

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When we put those two sections together, we see that

these Affordable Care Act penalties must be assessed and 

collected in the same manner as taxes. To be sure, Congress 

carefully avoided the dreaded T-word (“tax”) in the 

Affordable Care Act’s mandate provision itself, Section 

5000A. Instead, Section 5000A cross-references chapter 68 

subchapter B, which in turn says assessable penalties “shall be 

assessed and collected in the same manner as taxes.” 26 

U.S.C. § 6671(a).

But as we learn in logic class, when A=B and B=C, then 

A=C. So it is here: The Affordable Care Act requires that its 

penalty “be assessed and collected in the same manner as an 

assessable penalty under subchapter B of chapter 68,” and 

chapter 68 subchapter B penalties in turn must be “assessed 

and collected in the same manner as taxes.” It follows that 

these Affordable Care Act penalties must be assessed and 

collected in the same manner as taxes.

Turning back, then, to the Anti-Injunction Act: That Act 

refers specifically to “the assessment or collection of any tax,” 

and it requires that taxes be assessed and collected without

pre-enforcement judicial interference. It follows that these

Affordable Care Act penalties – which, as we have 

determined, must be “assessed and collected in the same 

manner as taxes” – likewise must be assessed and collected 

without pre-enforcement judicial interference. Otherwise, one 

could not say that the Affordable Care Act penalties were

being assessed and collected in the same manner as taxes, as 

the statute requires.

To conclude that the Anti-Injunction Act does not apply 

here, one would have to say that a tax that may be challenged 

in pre-enforcement suits is “assessed and collected in the 

same manner” as a tax that is insulated from pre-enforcement 

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22

suits. Such an argument is implausible and untenable, for 

three main reasons.

First, when the Anti-Injunction Act applies, it bars preenforcement suits – that is, taxpayer suits before the tax is 

assessed and collected. In those situations, the tax is typically

collected by the IRS when the taxpayer submits his or her tax 

return, see 26 U.S.C. §§ 6151, 6201, 6202, 6302, and thus 

before the taxpayer brings a lawsuit challenging the tax and 

seeking a refund. If the Anti-Injunction Act did not apply, 

however, the taxpayer could sue to block assessment and 

collection of the tax and refuse to pay the tax on his or her tax 

return. The taxpayer in that latter circumstance would 

generally pay any tax only after the litigation concluded. So 

as a temporal and practical matter, a tax is typically assessed 

and collected by the IRS much earlier – namely, before any 

lawsuit – when the Anti-Injunction Act applies. Two taxes 

are not assessed and collected in the same manner when they 

are assessed and collected years apart, and when one is

assessed and collected by the IRS before any litigation,

whereas the other is assessed and collected by the IRS only 

after the completion of litigation.

After all, the timing of tax assessment and collection is 

critical to tax collection generally, see, e.g., 26 U.S.C. § 6151, 

and to the Anti-Injunction Act in particular. Two of the main

statutory duties imposed on taxpayers are to file a tax return 

on time and to pay the tax liability on time. The whole theory

of the Anti-Injunction Act rests on the fact that there is a 

significant difference for purposes of the Government’s tax 

assessment and collection efforts between a tax assessed and 

collected in Year 1 and a tax assessed and collected in Year 2, 

for example. See Bob Jones, 416 U.S. at 747 (“powerful”

government interest in “protecting the administration of the 

tax system from premature judicial interference”). That 

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23

explains why the Supreme Court has described the objective 

of the Act as ensuring “prompt collection” of revenue, not 

merely eventual collection of revenue. Enochs v. Williams 

Packing, 370 U.S. at 7. So it would be rather odd to turn 

around here and say that temporal differences are irrelevant 

and that two taxes assessed and collected years apart are in 

fact “assessed and collected in the same manner.”

Second, the difference is not just the timing of assessment 

and collection, but also the means of assessment and 

collection. When the Anti-Injunction Act applies, a tax will 

generally be assessed and collected by the IRS with 

submission of the taxpayer’s tax return. See 26 U.S.C. 

§§ 6151, 6201, 6301, 6302. By contrast, if the AntiInjunction Act did not apply, a tax could be assessed and 

collected only after the litigation was resolved in favor of the 

IRS (if it was resolved in favor of the IRS), by means of a 

payment to the IRS in the wake of the court order. A tax 

assessed and collected by the IRS with a taxpayer’s tax return 

and a tax assessed and collected by the IRS not with the tax 

return but rather following a court order cannot persuasively 

be characterized, in my judgment, as being “assessed and 

collected in the same manner.”

In that regard, keep in mind that the individual tax return 

is absolutely central to the IRS’s assessment and collection of 

taxes. Tax returns are the means by which most taxpayers 

self-assess and pay their taxes, and the means by which much 

of the Government’s tax revenue is collected.

14

 14 The Supreme Court has recognized that point many times. 

See Hibbs v. Winn, 542 U.S. 88, 101 n.3 (2004) (“Income taxes, by 

contrast, are typically self-assessed in the United States. As anyone 

who has filed a tax return is unlikely to forget, the taxpayer, not the 

taxing authority, is the first party to make the relevant calculation of 

income taxes owed.”); United States v. Galletti, 541 U.S. 114, 122 

 The tax 

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24

return thus forms the foundation of the IRS’s assessment and 

collection process. A method of tax assessment and 

collection in which the IRS cannot rely on the individual tax 

return to assess and collect a tax but instead must engage in 

litigation to win the right to assess and collect a tax is a 

significantly different manner of assessment and collection –

particularly when conceivably multiplied millions of times 

over for each affected individual tax return. Taxes assessed 

and collected through these two widely divergent methods 

cannot reasonably be said to be “assessed and collected in the 

same manner.” See United States v. American Friends 

Service Committee, 419 U.S. 7, 10 (1974) (referring to 

withholding as method of collection and saying that AntiInjunction Act applies even when only one method of 

collection of taxes would be restrained by a suit).15

 

(2004) (“The Federal tax system is basically one of self-assessment, 

whereby each taxpayer computes the tax due and then files the 

appropriate form of return along with the requisite payment. In 

most cases, the Secretary accepts the self-assessment and simply 

records the liability of the taxpayer.”) (internal quotation marks and 

citation omitted); Commissioner v. Lane-Wells Co., 321 U.S. 219, 

223 (1944) (“The purpose is not alone to get tax information in 

some form but also to get it with such uniformity, completeness, 

and arrangement that the physical task of handling and verifying 

returns may be readily accomplished.”); see also BITTKER ET AL.,

FEDERAL INCOME TAXATION OF INDIVIDUALS ¶ 44.01 (“The 

importance of the tax return as the basic document on which the 

self-assessment system rests is attested by the number of statutory 

provisions requiring returns to be filed; specifying their filing dates; 

attaching legal consequences to the fact of filing, the date of filing, 

and the information included; and imposing penalties for filing 

negligent or fraudulent returns and for failing to file.”).

15 The Affordable Care Act prohibits the IRS from using some 

of its traditional enforcement tools to enforce payment of the tax 

penalties. The majority opinion suggests that the IRS’s ability to 

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25

Third, when the Anti-Injunction Act applies, the tax will 

be collected by the IRS and will be repaid to the taxpayer only 

if the taxpayer succeeds in the subsequent refund lawsuit. 

However, if the Anti-Injunction Act did not apply and the 

taxpayer succeeded in the pre-enforcement lawsuit, the tax 

would never be collected by the IRS at all. I find it quite 

difficult to say that a tax that is assessed and collected by the 

IRS but then returned to the taxpayer some years later is 

“assessed and collected in the same manner” as a tax that is 

never assessed or collected by the IRS at all. Common sense 

tells us that those two scenarios are not equivalent in terms of 

their manner of assessment and collection.

 

use only a subset of its traditional tax enforcement tools casts doubt 

on the conclusion that the Anti-Injunction Act applies. I 

respectfully have difficulty with that reasoning. The key point, as I 

see it, is that the penalty may be enforced only by the IRS, not by 

the U.S. Attorney or by other federal agencies. The fact that the 

IRS cannot use all of its traditional enforcement tools does not 

make it any less an IRS-enforced provision.

Perhaps the most important takeaway from the fact that 

Congress prevented the IRS from employing everything in its 

toolbox when enforcing the Affordable Care Act penalty provision 

is the following: Congress focused specifically on how this tax 

penalty would be collected and enforced. And Congress 

determined that some of the usual IRS enforcement tools were out 

of bounds. But Congress nonetheless did not allow taxpayers to 

bring pre-enforcement suits challenging the law and seeking to 

restrain assessment and collection of the tax penalty. Congress did 

not exempt the individual mandate provision from the AntiInjunction Act. Congress’s careful delineation of proper and 

improper enforcement tools suggests that Congress acted 

knowingly in not creating an exception to the Anti-Injunction Act 

for pre-enforcement constitutional challenges to the individual 

mandate provision.

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The distinction is no mere technicality. If the IRS can be 

deprived of expected revenues by the mere filing of a lawsuit

($4 billion annually in this instance), then the Government 

will face increased short-term budgetary problems and 

potentially higher near-term deficits, as well as greater 

difficulties in planning for future appropriations. The AntiInjunction Act was designed in part to alleviate those

problems. Finding a tax that is collected now to be equivalent 

to a tax that is never collected thus thwarts the Act’s central 

design.

In short, the Affordable Care Act dictates that its 

penalties be assessed and collected in the same manner as 

chapter 68 subchapter B penalties. Chapter 68 subchapter B 

penalties in turn must be assessed and collected “in the same 

manner as taxes.” Taxes are insulated from pre-enforcement 

suits by the Anti-Injunction Act. In order for the Affordable 

Care Act’s penalties to be assessed and collected in the same 

manner as the chapter 68 subchapter B penalties and thus in 

the same manner as taxes, the Affordable Care Act’s penalties 

likewise must be insulated from pre-enforcement suits by the 

Anti-Injunction Act.16

 16 One other aspect of Section 5000A buttresses the 

conclusion that a taxpayer cannot bring a pre-enforcement suit 

challenging the individual mandate. Section 5000A(g)(1) provides 

that the tax penalties for failing to have health insurance “shall be 

paid upon notice and demand by the Secretary.” That same 

language – “shall be paid upon notice and demand by the 

Secretary” – is found in the general penalty provision in chapter 68 

subchapter B. See 26 U.S.C. § 6671(a). The requirement that 

penalties “shall be paid upon notice and demand by the Secretary” 

generally indicates that the Secretary may assess and demand 

payment of the tax penalties without pre-enforcement judicial 

interference, whether by a pre-enforcement suit or a deficiency 

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Absent any statutory cross-references or definitions, the 

term “tax” in the Anti-Injunction Act might not itself cover 

the tax penalties at issue here. But the Affordable Care Act’s 

cross-reference to chapter 68 establishes that these tax 

penalties – like the tax penalties in chapter 68 – must be 

“assessed and collected in the same manner as taxes.” 

Because of the cross-reference, and because taxes subject to 

pre-enforcement suits are not assessed and collected in the 

same manner as taxes insulated from pre-enforcement suits, 

the Anti-Injunction Act bars us from exercising jurisdiction 

over this case.17

 

proceeding in Tax Court. Cf. 26 U.S.C. § 6213. (If the taxpayer 

still refuses to pay after notice and demand, then the IRS and the 

taxpayer will have to resolve the dispute in enforcement 

proceedings.) After all, if a pre-enforcement suit could be filed to 

block payment of the penalties, then the tax penalties would not be 

paid “upon notice and demand by the Secretary,” as the statute 

requires. Absent any textual indication to the contrary, this 

language further suggests that a taxpayer may not bring a preenforcement suit challenging the individual mandate.

17 That conclusion finds further support when we examine 

how the Anti-Injunction Act applies to other Tax Code penalties 

that, like the Affordable Care Act penalty, are codified outside of 

chapter 68 but cross-reference chapter 68. For example, Sections 

5114, 5684, and 5761 of the Tax Code impose tax penalties for 

violation of certain laws related to liquor and tobacco; all provide 

that the penalties “shall be assessed, collected, and paid in the same 

manner as taxes, as provided in section 6665(a).” 

Section 6665(a), which is in chapter 68, in turn states that 

“penalties provided by this chapter shall be paid upon notice and 

demand and shall be assessed, collected, and paid in the same 

manner as taxes.” (Section 6665(a) thus echoes Section 6671(a), 

the similarly worded section in chapter 68 cross-referenced by the 

Affordable Care Act.) The Government agrees that the tax 

penalties imposed under Sections 5114, 5684, and 5761 are subject 

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B

In arguing that the Anti-Injunction Act does not apply 

here, the majority opinion relies in part on a strained 

interpretation of Section 6671(a) of chapter 68 subchapter B. 

Recall that Section 5000A provides that Affordable Care 

Act penalties for those without health insurance must be 

assessed and collected in the same manner as penalties under 

chapter 68 subchapter B, which in turn must be assessed and 

collected in the same manner as taxes. The relevant crossreferenced provision in chapter 68 subchapter B is Section 

6671(a), which states:

The penalties and liabilities provided by this subchapter 

shall be paid upon notice and demand by the Secretary, 

 

to the Anti-Injunction Act and thus insulated from pre-enforcement 

suits. See Supplemental Brief for United States at 4, Liberty Univ. 

v. Geithner, No. 10-2347, 2011 WL 3962915 (4th Cir. Sept. 8, 

2011). But those provisions and their cross-references to chapter 

68 cannot logically be distinguished from the Affordable Care Act 

and its cross-reference to chapter 68. In all of the statutes, after all, 

a tax “penalty” is imposed by a Tax Code provision outside chapter 

68. All of those provisions require that the tax penalty be assessed 

and collected in the same manner as taxes. Therefore, all of those 

provisions – including the tax penalty in the Affordable Care Act –

are subject to the Anti-Injunction Act and insulated from preenforcement suits. The Government counters that Sections 

5114(c)(3), 5684(b), and 5761(e) all expressly refer to “taxes” in 

cross-referencing Section 6665(a) and thus are distinguishable from 

Section 5000A. But that is not a relevant distinction. As we have 

seen, Section 5000A(g)(1) accomplishes that same result by 

referring to Section 6671(a), which in turn refers to “taxes.” 

Therefore, Section 5114, 5684, 5761, and 5000A penalties are all 

subject to the Anti-Injunction Act and insulated from preenforcement suits.

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29

and shall be assessed and collected in the same manner as 

taxes. Except as otherwise provided, any reference in 

this title to “tax” imposed by this title shall be deemed 

also to refer to the penalties and liabilities provided by 

this subchapter.

The first sentence of Section 6671(a) is key for purposes 

of the Affordable Care Act’s cross-reference and for my 

analysis above that the Anti-Injunction Act applies here. The 

Affordable Care Act and the first sentence of Section 6671(a) 

together mean that the Affordable Care Act’s penalties for 

failure to have health insurance must be assessed and 

collected in the same manner as taxes. As explained above, 

these tax penalties (in chapter 68 and thus also in the 

Affordable Care Act) can be assessed and collected in the 

same manner as taxes only if they are insulated from preenforcement suits under the Anti-Injunction Act, as taxes are.

The majority opinion focuses on the second sentence of 

Section 6671(a). The second sentence equates the penalties in 

chapter 68 subchapter B to taxes for all Tax Code purposes. 

As the majority opinion states, that second sentence therefore 

appears to independently make the Anti-Injunction Act 

applicable to chapter 68 subchapter B penalties. The majority 

opinion also states that the second sentence of Section 

6671(a) – unlike the first sentence – does not apply to the 

Affordable Care Act’s penalties. From that, however, the 

majority opinion draws the incorrect conclusion that the AntiInjunction Act does not apply to the Affordable Care Act’s 

tax penalties.

The majority opinion’s focus on the second sentence of 

Section 6671(a) is a diversion. As explained above, Section 

6671(a)’s first sentence on its own dictates that the AntiInjunction Act applies to chapter 68 subchapter B penalties –

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and thus also to the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate 

penalties, which must be assessed and collected in the same 

manner as chapter 68 subchapter B penalties.

Indeed, when the Government initially told district courts 

around the country that the Anti-Injunction Act barred these 

suits, it too relied on the first sentence of Section 6671(a). 

See Memorandum in Support of United States’ Motion to 

Dismiss at 15, Mead v. Holder, 766 F. Supp. 2d 16 (D.D.C. 

2011) (No. 1:10-cv-950) (“It does not matter whether the 

payment sought to be enjoined is labeled a ‘penalty’ rather 

than a ‘tax.’ With exceptions immaterial here, the penalty is 

‘assessed and collected in the same manner’ as other 

assessable penalties under the Internal Revenue Code, I.R.C. 

§ 5000A(g)(1), and, like these other penalties, falls within the 

bar of the AIA. I.R.C. § 6671(a).”) (some citations 

omitted).18

 18 The majority opinion suggests that I am breaking new 

ground in interpreting the first sentence of Section 6671(a) in this 

way. The majority opinion is incorrect. Many cases analyzing

other Tax Code penalties encompassed by Section 6671(a) have 

concluded that the Anti-Injunction Act applies to those penalties 

because of the requirement in the first sentence of Section 6671(a) 

that the penalties be assessed and collected in the same manner as 

taxes. See, e.g., Kelly v. Lethert, 362 F.2d 629, 633 (8th Cir. 1966); 

Nat’l Commodity & Barter Ass’n v. United States, 625 F. Supp. 

920, 921 (D. Colo. 1986); Griffith v. Commissioner, 598 F. Supp. 

405, 406 (N.D. Ohio 1983); Crouch v. Commissioner, 447 F. Supp. 

385, 386 (N.D. Cal. 1978); McAllister v. Dudley, 148 F. Supp. 548, 

550-51 (W.D. Pa. 1956).

A leading treatise similarly states: “[B]ecause § 6671(a) 

provides that penalties shall be assessed and collected as taxes, the 

Anti-Injunction Act bars taxpayers from seeking to enjoin the 

assessment of penalties.” BITTKER ET AL., FEDERAL INCOME 

TAXATION OF INDIVIDUALS ¶ 51.10. It appears, moreover, that no 

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31

The second sentence of Section 6671(a), to which the 

majority opinion points, applies to more than just assessment 

and collection of taxes. That sentence equates chapter 68 

subchapter B penalties to taxes for the full panoply of rights 

and obligations under the Tax Code. The second sentence 

thus gives taxpayers numerous rights with respect to 

imposition of chapter 68 subchapter B tax penalties that 

taxpayers possess with respect to imposition of taxes – to take 

just one example, the right to bring a civil action for damages 

against an IRS employee who violates any Tax Code 

provision in collecting a tax. 26 U.S.C. § 7433(a).

To be sure, the second sentence of Section 6671(a) is so 

broadly written that it arguably also makes chapter 68 

subchapter B penalties equivalent to taxes for purposes of 

assessment and collection – which the first sentence 

specifically accomplishes. The majority opinion finds that 

redundancy problematic. But such redundancy is not unusual. 

It is common, after all, for a list of specific statutory 

requirements or prohibitions to accompany a general statutory 

requirement or prohibition that encompasses the specific.

19

 

case decided before the current litigation has ever said that the first 

sentence of Section 6671(a) on its own is insufficient to make the 

Anti-Injunction Act applicable to a Tax Code penalty.

19 See, e.g., Ali v. Fed. Bureau of Prisons, 552 U.S. 214, 226-

27 (2008) (“Congress may have simply intended to remove any 

doubt that officers of customs or excise were included in ‘law 

enforcement officers.’ . . . In any event, we do not woodenly apply 

limiting principles every time Congress includes a specific example 

along with a general phrase.”) (brackets omitted); Norfolk & 

Western Railway Co. v. American Train Dispatchers’ Ass’n, 499 

U.S. 117, 129 (1991); Harrison v. PPG Industries, Inc., 446 U.S. 

578, 580 n.1, 589 (1980); see also Springer v. Philippine Islands, 

277 U.S. 189, 206 (1928) (“Where a statute contains a grant of 

power enumerating certain things which may be done and also a 

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Focusing on the plain text, as we must: The Affordable 

Care Act says that its tax penalties must be assessed and 

collected in the same manner as chapter 68 subchapter B 

penalties. The first sentence of Section 6671(a) definitively 

establishes that chapter 68 subchapter B tax penalties are to be 

assessed and collected in the same manner as taxes. Even if 

the second sentence would have accomplished that same 

result for chapter 68 subchapter B penalties, the first sentence 

makes “double sure,” a routine approach to legislative 

drafting.20

 

general grant of power which standing alone would include these 

things and more, the general grant may be given full effect if the 

context shows that the enumeration was not intended to be 

exclusive.”).

 And that first sentence – combined with the 

20 See Microsoft Corp. v. i4i Ltd. Partnership, 131 S. Ct. 

2238, 2249 (2011) (“There are times when Congress enacts 

provisions that are superfluous . . . .”) (quoting Corley v. United 

States, 129 S. Ct. 1558, 1572-73 (2009) (Alito, J., dissenting)); 

DePierre v. United States, 131 S. Ct. 2225, 2232 (2011) 

(“Accordingly, Congress’ choice to use the admittedly redundant 

term ‘cocaine base’ to refer to chemically basic cocaine is best 

understood as an effort to make clear that clause (iii) does not apply 

to offenses involving powder cocaine or other nonbasic cocainerelated substances.”); Abbott v. United States, 131 S. Ct. 18, 29

(2010) (“This reading gives effect to the statutory language 

commanding that all § 924(c) offenders shall receive additional 

punishment for their violation of that provision, a command 

reiterated three times.”) (emphasis added); Conn. Nat’l Bank v. 

Germain, 503 U.S. 249, 253-54 (1992) (“Redundancies across 

statutes are not unusual events in drafting, and so long as there is no 

‘positive repugnancy’ between two laws, a court must give effect to 

both. . . . We have stated time and again that courts must presume 

that a legislature says in a statute what it means and means in a 

statute what it says there.”) (citation omitted); Crandon v. United 

States, 494 U.S. 152, 174 (1990) (Scalia, J., concurring in 

judgment) (“superfluous exceptions (to ‘make assurance doubly 

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33

Affordable Care Act’s cross-reference – establishes that the 

Affordable Care Act’s tax penalties must be assessed and 

collected in the same manner as taxes and therefore insulated 

from pre-enforcement suits.

The majority opinion’s reference to the redundancy (or 

surplusage) principle here is further flawed because that 

principle carries force only when there are two alternative 

interpretations, one of which would eliminate the redundancy 

or surplusage. But under the majority opinion’s own 

approach, the entire first sentence of Section 6671(a) would

be surplusage. Cf. Microsoft Corp. v. i4i Ltd. Partnership, 

131 S. Ct. 2238, 2248 (2011) (“Here, no interpretation of § 

282 – including the two alternatives advanced by Microsoft –

avoids excess language.”). Indeed, the majority opinion’s 

invocation of the redundancy principle with regard to the 

second sentence of Section 6671(a) is particularly misplaced 

given that the entirety of Section 6671(a) – both the first and 

second sentences – is already redundant of Section 6665(a). 

Section 6665(a), after all, separately establishes that all 

chapter 68 penalties (not just those in chapter 68 subchapter 

B) are to be assessed, collected, and otherwise treated as 

taxes.

The truth is that the broad language of the second 

sentence of Section 6671(a) makes redundancy with the first 

 

sure’) are a more common phenomenon than the insertion of utterly 

pointless language”); Shook v. D.C. Fin. Responsibility & Mgmt. 

Assistance Auth., 132 F.3d 775, 782 (D.C. Cir. 1998) (“Sometimes 

Congress drafts statutory provisions that appear preclusive of other 

unmentioned possibilities – just as it sometimes drafts provisions 

that appear duplicative of others – simply, in Macbeth’s words, ‘to 

make assurance double sure.’ That is, Congress means to clarify 

what might be doubtful – that the mentioned item is covered –

without meaning to exclude the unmentioned ones.”).

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34

sentence inevitable here. The lesson from the redundancy in 

these sections and elsewhere in the Tax Code is not to read 

provisions out of the statute or contrary to their plain 

meaning, as the majority opinion would have us do. Rather, 

we should read the provisions according to their terms, 

recognizing that Congress often wants to make “double sure” 

– a technique so common that it has spawned its own Latin 

canon, ex abundanti cautela. See Fort Stewart Schools v. 

FLRA, 495 U.S. 641, 646 (1990) (“It might reasonably be 

argued, of course, that these two exceptions are indeed 

technically unnecessary, and were inserted out of an 

abundance of caution – a drafting imprecision venerable 

enough to have left its mark on legal Latin (ex abundanti 

cautela).”); see also WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, MACBETH act 4, 

scene 1 (“But yet I’ll make assurance double sure”).21

In short, the first sentence of Section 6671(a) on its own 

dictates that chapter 68 subchapter B penalties are to be 

assessed and collected in the same manner as taxes. Because 

Affordable Care Act penalties must be assessed and collected 

 21 Indeed, the Constitution employs this approach. See United 

States v. Wiltberger, 18 U.S. 76, 115 n.a (1820) (Marshall, C.J.) (“It 

seems highly probable that the expression ‘maritime jurisdiction,’ 

in the constitution, was borrowed from the language of those 

commissions, and was introduced ex abundanti cautelâ, and 

superadded to the term ‘admiralty,’ in order to obviate any doubt as 

to the full extent of the authority meant to be conferred.”); Brown v. 

United States, 12 U.S. 110, 150-51 (1814) (Story, J., dissenting) 

(“If the constitution had been silent as to letters of marque and 

captures, it would not have narrowed the authority of congress. 

The authority to grant letters of marque and reprisal, and to regulate 

captures, are ordinary and necessary incidents to the power of 

declaring war. It would be utterly ineffectual without them. The 

expression, therefore, of that which is implied in the very nature of 

the grant, cannot weaken the force of the grant itself. The words 

are merely explanatory, and introduced ex abundanti cautela.”).

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in the same manner as chapter 68 subchapter B penalties, the 

Affordable Care Act’s penalties likewise must be assessed 

and collected in the same manner as taxes. To be assessed 

and collected in the same manner as taxes, all of these tax 

penalties must be insulated from pre-enforcement suits. If we 

are to give effect to the plain text of the statute, the AntiInjunction Act must bar pre-enforcement suits challenging the 

Affordable Care Act’s penalties for failure to have health 

insurance.22

III

In the alternative, in analysis somewhat similar to the 

Fourth Circuit’s, I would conclude that the Anti-Injunction 

Act applies here because of the definition of the IRS’s 

assessment authority provided by Section 6201 of the Tax 

Code. That section defines “assessable penalties” to be 

“taxes” for purposes of the IRS’s assessment authority. The 

Affordable Care Act’s penalty is an assessable penalty and is 

therefore a tax for purposes of the IRS’s assessment authority 

under Section 6201. The Anti-Injunction Act bars suits to 

restrain assessment or collection of taxes. It thus bars this 

suit.23

 22 The majority opinion reasons that Congress could easily 

have said in Section 5000A: “The Anti-Injunction Act applies to 

these tax penalties.” True, but Congress could just as easily have 

said: “The Anti-Injunction Act does not apply to these tax 

penalties.” Congress did neither. We must analyze the statutory 

terms that Congress employed, not those that we wish Congress had 

employed.

23 The Fourth Circuit relied on Section 6201 to conclude that 

the Anti-Injunction Act barred a pre-enforcement suit challenging 

the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate. See Liberty Univ. v. 

Geithner, No. 10-2347, 2011 WL 3962915 (4th Cir. Sept. 8, 2011). 

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To spell this out, let’s again go to the text. Section 6201 

authorizes and requires the IRS24 to make “assessments of all 

taxes (including interest, additional amounts, additions to the 

tax, and assessable penalties) imposed by this title.” 26 

U.S.C. § 6201(a). Importantly, Section 6201 thus defines 

taxes for assessment purposes as “including” additional 

amounts, additions to the tax, and assessable penalties, which 

are the three kinds of civil penalties imposed by the Tax Code 

and assessed by the IRS.25

Of particular relevance here, Section 6201 defines 

“taxes” to include “assessable penalties” that are “imposed by 

this title.” Subchapter B of chapter 68 of the Tax Code is 

entitled “Assessable Penalties.” The Affordable Care Act 

requires that the “penalty” for failure to have health insurance 

be “assessed and collected in the same manner as an 

assessable penalty under subchapter B of chapter 68.” 26 

 

 

Although I do not agree with every detail of the Fourth Circuit’s 

reasoning, I do agree with its bottom-line conclusion that Section 

6201 defines the Affordable Care Act penalty to be a tax for 

purposes of the IRS’s assessment authority, which in turn means 

that the Affordable Care Act penalty is insulated from preenforcement suits by the Anti-Injunction Act.

24 The statute refers to the Secretary of the Treasury, who in 

turn has delegated assessment and collection responsibility to the 

IRS, specifically to the Commissioner of Internal Revenue. See 26 

U.S.C. § 7701(a)(11)(B); see also, e.g., 26 C.F.R. §§ 301.6201-1, 

301.7701-9 (2011). For convenience, I will refer here to the IRS.

25 The Anti-Injunction Act generally does not apply to 

penalties that are imposed outside of the Tax Code and enforced by 

federal government officials or agencies other than the IRS. See 

FEA v. Algonquin SNG, Inc., 426 U.S. 548, 558 n.9 (1976) (Act 

does not apply in case involving penalties imposed by the 

President); Mulford v. Smith, 307 U.S. 38, 46-47 (1939) (Act does 

not apply in case involving penalties imposed by Secretary of 

Agriculture).

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U.S.C. § 5000A(g)(1). Because the Affordable Care Act 

penalty is a Tax Code “penalty” that is to be “assessed” by the 

IRS – and, moreover, is to be assessed “in the same manner 

as” a chapter 68 subchapter B “assessable penalty” – it is an 

“assessable penalty.” Because the Affordable Care Act 

penalty is an assessable penalty and because Section 6201 

classifies assessable penalties as taxes for purposes of the 

IRS’s assessment power, the Affordable Care Act penalty is a 

tax for purposes of the IRS’s assessment authority under 

Section 6201. 

The Anti-Injunction Act in turn provides that “no suit for 

the purpose of restraining the assessment or collection of any 

tax shall be maintained in any court by any person.” 26 

U.S.C. § 7421(a). Given that Section 6201 defines 

“assessments of all taxes” to include assessment of the 

Affordable Care Act penalty at issue here, and given that the 

Anti-Injunction Act bars suits to restrain the “assessment 

. . . of any tax,” the Anti-Injunction Act bars a suit to restrain 

the assessment of these Affordable Care Act tax penalties just 

as it bars a suit to restrain the assessment of taxes. Therefore, 

plaintiffs’ suit is barred by the Anti-Injunction Act.26

 26 That’s not all. Sections 6301, 6302, and 6303 provide that 

the IRS must collect any tax that has been assessed pursuant to 

Sections 6201-6203. Because the IRS’s collection duty tracks the 

IRS’s assessment duty, the IRS’s collection duty necessarily 

encompasses all of the penalties that have been assessed by the IRS 

pursuant to Sections 6201-6203. Given that (i) these Affordable 

Care Act penalties are taxes for purposes of the IRS’s assessment 

power and (ii) the statute in turn requires the IRS to collect all 

assessments, it follows that the Affordable Care Act’s penalties are 

taxes for purposes of the IRS’s collection authority. So plaintiffs’ 

suit, if successful, would prevent the IRS from collecting taxes as 

defined by Sections 6301, 6302, and 6303. And the Anti-Injunction 

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How does the majority opinion respond to this? The 

majority opinion simply asserts that the Affordable Care 

penalty is not an assessable penalty under Section 6201 and 

thus is not covered by that section. I find the majority 

opinion’s reasoning on this point quite unpersuasive. 

The majority opinion insists that the only “assessable 

penalties” in the Tax Code are those listed in chapter 68 

subchapter B. That is incorrect. Section 6201 – which 

defines the IRS’s assessment authority – speaks of “assessable 

penalties” imposed “by this title,” not just of assessable 

penalties imposed by chapter 68 of the title.27

 

Act bars suits to restrain the “collection of any tax.” Therefore, 

plaintiffs’ suit is barred by the Anti-Injunction Act for that 

additional reason as well.

 Indeed, there 

are numerous “assessable penalties” in the Tax Code that are 

outside of chapter 68. For example, chapter 61 contains 

several assessable penalties, and the IRS itself states that the 

“assessable penalties” in the Code are not all in chapter 68. 

See INTERNAL REVENUE MANUAL 20.1.9.1.1 (Apr. 22, 2011) 

(a number of penalties in Sections 6038-6038C of chapter 61 

“are assessable penalties and are not covered by deficiency 

procedures”); see also 26 U.S.C. §§ 6038(b), 6038A(d), 

6038B(c), 6038C(c).

27 The majority opinion also suggests that all the penalties in 

chapter 68 relate to late filing, erroneous reporting, and insufficient 

payment. But that’s inaccurate as well. See, e.g., 26 U.S.C. 

§ 6720A (chapter 68 penalty for sale of diesel fuel that does not 

meet EPA regulations); 26 U.S.C. § 6720C (chapter 68 penalty for 

failure to notify health plan of cessation of eligibility for COBRA 

premium assistance). In any event, the majority opinion’s claim on 

that point is irrelevant because Section 6201 plainly defines taxes to 

include all assessable penalties “imposed by this title,” not just by 

chapter 68 of the title.

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Moreover, if the Affordable Care Act “penalty” is not an 

“assessable penalty,” what kind of Tax Code civil penalty 

does the majority opinion think it is? The two other options 

are an “additional amount” or an “addition to the tax.” After 

all, additional amounts, additions to the tax, and assessable 

penalties are the civil penalties imposed by the Tax Code and 

assessed by the IRS. Numerous provisions of the Code refer 

to additional amounts, additions to the tax, and assessable 

penalties as the universe of Tax Code civil penalties that are 

assessed by the IRS. See, e.g., 26 U.S.C. §§ 860(h), 6155(a), 

6201(a), 6202, 6321, 6324A(a), 6601(e)(2), 6602, 7122(b), 

7522(a). But all three categories of civil penalties are defined 

by Section 6201 to be “taxes” for purposes of the IRS’s 

assessment authority. So even if the Affordable Care Act 

penalty were an additional amount or an addition to the tax, it 

would still be a tax under Section 6201 and the AntiInjunction Act would still apply. The majority opinion’s 

effort to wriggle out of Section 6201 is futile.

In sum, the Affordable Care Act penalties at issue here 

are defined to be taxes for purposes of the IRS’s assessment 

power under Section 6201. That necessarily means that these 

penalties also are taxes for purposes of the Anti-Injunction 

Act’s protection against pre-enforcement suits seeking to 

restrain the IRS’s assessment of “any tax.” For that 

alternative and independent reason, the Anti-Injunction Act 

bars the Court from deciding this suit.28

 28 Section 7421 of the Code codifies the Anti-Injunction Act. 

The companion provision, Section 7422, requires exhaustion of 

administrative remedies for taxpayers who bring tax refund suits. 

Section 7422 provides: “No suit or proceeding shall be maintained 

in any court for the recovery of any internal revenue tax alleged to 

have been erroneously or illegally assessed or collected, or of any 

penalty claimed to have been collected without authority, or of any 

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IV

Trying a different approach, the majority opinion 

separately contends that the Anti-Injunction Act does not 

apply to plaintiffs’ suit even if the Affordable Care Act 

penalties are taxes for purposes of the Anti-Injunction Act. 

According to the majority opinion, plaintiffs are challenging 

only the mandate to purchase health insurance and not the tax 

penalties imposed for violating the mandate (even though the 

mandate is enforced solely through these tax penalties). The 

majority opinion argues that the Anti-Injunction Act does not 

 

sum alleged to have been excessive or in any manner wrongfully 

collected, until a claim for refund or credit has been duly filed” 

with the IRS. 26 U.S.C. § 7422(a) (emphasis added). Section 

7422, by its terms, contemplates that taxpayers who pay tax 

penalties may challenge those penalties in refund suits against the 

IRS. The juxtaposition of the Anti-Injunction Act (Section 7421) 

and the refund suit provision (Section 7422) reinforces the general 

principle that taxpayers are to pay first and litigate later, including 

with respect to tax penalties such as those contained in Section 

5000A of the Affordable Care Act. See Enochs v. Williams 

Packing & Navigation Co., 370 U.S. 1, 7 (1962) (Anti-Injunction 

Act requires “that the legal right to the disputed sums be 

determined in a suit for refund” and thereby ensures the 

Government “prompt collection of its lawful revenue”).

It has been suggested that Section 7422’s express reference to 

penalties might indicate that Section 7421 does not cover penalties, 

because Section 7421 refers only to taxes. But my analysis of 

Section 7421 does not rely on the term “tax” in isolation (in which 

case that critique might have some force). Rather, my analysis 

relies on two independent and alternative statutory cross-references 

which make clear that the Affordable Care Act’s penalties for 

failing to have health insurance are taxes for purposes of the IRS’s 

assessment and collection power (Section 6201) and are to be 

assessed and collected “in the same manner as taxes” (Section 

6671).

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apply when a plaintiff purports to challenge the regulatory 

purpose or effect of a tax. That is the same reasoning this 

Court adopted to get around the Anti-Injunction Act in our 

1973 decision in Americans United. The problem for the 

majority opinion here is that the Supreme Court emphatically 

rejected this Court’s reasoning in that case, calling it 

“unpersuasive” and “circular.” Alexander v. “Americans 

United” Inc., 416 U.S. 752, 760-62 (1974), rev’g 477 F.2d 

1169 (D.C. Cir. 1973); see also Bob Jones Univ. v. Simon, 

416 U.S. 725 (1974). There is no call for a sequel.

The majority opinion’s effort to characterize plaintiffs’ 

suit as a challenge to the mandate and not to the tax penalty is 

wrong on the facts and wrong on the law. It is wrong on the 

facts because plaintiffs’ complaint repeatedly and 

unmistakably asks for relief from the Affordable Care Act’s 

tax penalties.29

 29 Contrary to the majority opinion’s suggestion, plaintiffs’ 

complaint seeks to restrain the assessment and collection of the tax 

penalties. Plaintiffs’ complaint requests “a permanent injunction 

against the enforcement of the individual mandate provisions.” 

First Amended Complaint at 26, Mead v. Holder, 766 F. Supp. 2d 

16 (D.D.C. 2011) (No. 1:10-cv-950). Of course, the “enforcement” 

contemplated by the statute is the assessment and collection of the 

tax penalties by the IRS. Therefore, the injunctive relief that

plaintiffs are seeking to obtain “against the enforcement of the 

individual mandate provisions” is an injunction barring the IRS 

from assessing and collecting the Affordable Care Act tax penalties 

for failing to have health insurance.

 It is wrong on the law because, in any event, 

The complaint also describes in detail the burden that the 

Affordable Care Act tax penalties would impose on plaintiffs’ 

household finances – details supporting plaintiffs’ request for

injunctive relief against the tax penalty. See id. at 6-16 (stating 

each plaintiff “will be forced to pay – under strong objection – the 

annual shared responsibility payment” and estimating each 

plaintiff’s shared responsibility payment for “each taxable year”); 

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the Supreme Court has squarely held that a taxpayer cannot 

avoid the Anti-Injunction Act by purporting to challenge the 

regulatory purpose or effect of a tax.

Regulatory taxes regulate behavior by imposing higher 

taxes on disfavored behavior and lower taxes on favored 

behavior. See Sonzinsky v. United States, 300 U.S. 506, 513 

(1937). In cases involving regulatory taxes, the Supreme 

Court has flatly rejected evasion of the Anti-Injunction Act 

through the kind of semantics employed by the majority 

opinion here. In both Bob Jones and Americans United, the 

plaintiff non-profit organizations argued that they were 

challenging the IRS’s termination of their tax-exempt status 

for allegedly engaging in disfavored conduct (race 

discrimination in one case and improper lobbying in the 

other), not the increased taxes they would have to pay because 

of the denial of their tax-exempt status. The organization in 

Americans United even offered to pay its extra taxes 

regardless of the outcome of the case in order to show that it 

was not seeking to avoid payment of taxes. See 416 U.S. at 

760. The Supreme Court held that the Anti-Injunction Act 

still barred the suits, stating that taxpayers cannot end-run the 

Anti-Injunction Act by claiming that they object to a tax law’s 

regulatory effect and not the tax itself. The Court further 

stated that taxpayers cannot evade the Anti-Injunction Act by 

claiming that the Government’s purpose in imposing the tax 

was to regulate behavior more than to raise revenue. The key 

inquiry, according to the Supreme Court, is the suit’s impact 

 

id. at 6-16 (each plaintiff is “compelled to adjust” his or her 

“finances now, by setting aside money, and will continue to do so, 

to pay the annual shared responsibility payment”); id. at 3 (“The 

total amount of shared responsibility payments that Plaintiffs must 

prepare themselves to pay through 2020 may be greater than 

$27,265 depending upon their income levels during each taxable 

year and cost of living adjustments.”).

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on tax collection: whether the taxpayers’ suit, if successful, 

would reduce the plaintiffs’ taxes – or indeed “anyone’s 

taxes.” Id. If so, then the Anti-Injunction Act applies. See 

Bob Jones, 416 U.S. at 738-42; Americans United, 416 U.S. at 

760-62.

The Supreme Court later summarized that principle this 

way: “Because the suit would have restrained the collection 

of income taxes from the taxpayer and its contributors, as well 

as the collection of federal social security and unemployment 

taxes from the taxpayer, the Court concluded that the suit was 

an action to restrain the assessment or collection of any tax 

within the meaning of the Anti-Injunction Act.” South 

Carolina v. Regan, 465 U.S. 367, 375 (1984) (internal 

quotation marks omitted).30

Bob Jones and Americans United therefore mean the 

following: If the only sanction attached to a federal law that 

regulates private behavior is the imposition of a civil tax 

exaction that falls within the coverage of the Anti-Injunction 

Act, then the Anti-Injunction Act applies and, absent a 

recognized exception, precludes a pre-enforcement suit 

challenging that law. The Anti-Injunction Act cannot be 

evaded by characterizing the suit as a challenge only to the 

 30 The Supreme Court has also held that “the constitutional 

nature of a taxpayer’s claim” is of “no consequence under the AntiInjunction Act.” Americans United, 416 U.S. at 759. The Court 

has repeated the same point in several other cases. See, e.g., United

States v. Clintwood Elkhorn Mining Co., 553 U.S. 1, 10 (2008) 

(“This is so even though the Anti-Injunction Act’s prohibitions 

impose upon the wronged taxpayer requirements” that “the 

taxpayer must succumb to an unconstitutional tax, and seek 

recourse only after it has been unlawfully exacted.”); see also 

United States v. American Friends Service Committee, 419 U.S. 7, 

11 (1974); Bailey v. George, 259 U.S. 16, 20 (1922).

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44

regulatory aspect of a tax. The Act is more than a pleading 

hurdle. A regulatory tax, at least so long as it actually would 

raise some revenue, is a tax within the meaning of the AntiInjunction Act. See Bob Jones, 416 U.S. at 738-48.31

In attempting to distinguish away Bob Jones and 

Americans United, the majority opinion says those cases 

apply only if the regulation and tax are “inextricably linked.” 

Maj. Op. at 17. But the Supreme Court did not use that 

phrase in its opinions in Bob Jones and Americans United, 

and it is unclear what the majority opinion here intends it to 

mean. What the Supreme Court did say is that a suit 

challenging a regulatory tax is barred by the Anti-Injunction 

Act if the suit would restrain the IRS’s assessment or 

 31 The Court has long rejected arguments that a Due Process 

Clause violation occurs when a statute compels a taxpayer to pay an 

allegedly unconstitutional or otherwise illegal tax before being able 

to challenge its legality in a refund suit. See Bob Jones, 416 U.S. at 

746-47 (rejecting university’s argument that forcing it to pay some 

taxes first and then litigate its claim in a refund suit “will deny it 

due process of law”); see also Phillips v. Commissioner, 283 U.S. 

589, 597 (1931) (summary tax collection procedure “satisfies the 

requirements of due process because two alternative methods of 

eventual judicial review are available to the” affected party –

“bringing an action, either against the United States or the collector, 

to recover the amount paid”); Dodge v. Osborn, 240 U.S. 118, 122 

(1916).

To be sure, the Due Process Clause requires an exception to 

the Anti-Injunction Act when the tax is so high as to render the 

purported tax not just a disincentive or civil penalty, but a criminal

prohibition. See, e.g., Lipke v. Lederer, 259 U.S. 557, 560-62 

(1922); see also Bob Jones, 416 U.S. at 743; United States v. One 

Ford Coupe Auto., 272 U.S. 321, 329 (1926); Graham v. Du Pont, 

262 U.S. 234, 257 (1923). But otherwise, the Anti-Injunction Act 

applies to regulatory taxes if the taxpayer’s suit would prevent the 

IRS from assessing or collecting “anyone’s taxes.”

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45

collection of taxes. Plaintiffs’ suit here would do just that; 

therefore, it is barred.32

Moreover, the Supreme Court long ago held that the 

Anti-Injunction Act applies even to a regulatory tax that 

effectively prohibits (or mandates) conduct, not just one that 

disincentivizes (or incentivizes) conduct. See Bailey v. 

George, 259 U.S. 16 (1922); Bailey v. Drexel Furniture Co., 

259 U.S. 20 (1922). In the twin Bailey cases, the Supreme 

Court recognized that the Child Labor Tax didn’t just 

discourage employment of child labor; it in effect prohibited 

it. The Court nonetheless held that the Anti-Injunction Act 

barred a pre-enforcement suit challenging the prohibition. 

That Bailey principle remains good law, as the Supreme Court 

explained in Bob Jones: “Moreover, petitioner’s argument 

fails to give appropriate weight to Bailey v. George, 259 U.S. 

16 (1922). In that case, the Court held that the Act blocked a 

 32 In cases involving state taxes under the related State Tax 

Injunction Act, a few lower courts have sometimes allowed 

taxpayers to challenge the regulatory aspect of a regulatory 

exaction. Three points concerning those State Tax Injunction Act 

cases: First, this case concerns the federal Anti-Injunction Act, and 

Bob Jones and Americans United are directly on point in saying 

that the federal Anti-Injunction Act bars suits that purport to target 

the regulatory aspect of a federal tax. Second, through its crossreferences, the federal Tax Code defines what exactions qualify as 

taxes for purposes of the Anti-Injunction Act. See 26 U.S.C. 

§§ 6201, 6671, 5000A. The State Tax Injunction Act does not. So 

to the extent there’s a difference in case law, that difference stems 

from the distinct texts and contexts of the two statutes. Third, with 

respect to the State Tax Injunction Act, a recent en banc Seventh 

Circuit decision authored by Judge Posner explained in detail why 

it is wrong even under the State Tax Injunction Act to allow a preenforcement challenge to the regulatory aspect of a state tax. See 

Empress Casino Joliet Corp. v. Balmoral Racing Club, Inc., 651 

F.3d 722, 730 (7th Cir. 2011). 

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46

pre-enforcement suit to enjoin collection of the federal Child 

Labor Tax, although the tax was challenged as a regulatory 

measure beyond the taxing power of Congress. Significantly, 

the Court announced Bailey v. George on the same day that it 

issued Bailey v. Drexel Furniture Co., 259 U.S. 20 (1922), a 

tax-refund case in which the Court struck down the Child 

Labor Tax Law as unconstitutional on the grounds that the 

taxpayer attempted to raise prematurely in Bailey v. George.” 

416 U.S. at 740-41. 

So to the extent the majority opinion here tries to argue 

that there’s an Anti-Injunction Act distinction between (i) a 

civil tax provision that creates a mandate or prohibition and 

(ii) a tax provision that creates an incentive or disincentive, 

that distinction does not work. The relevant Anti-Injunction 

Act question is whether plaintiffs’ suit, if successful, would 

reduce their tax liability. Here, plaintiffs’ suit, if successful, 

would reduce (to zero) their tax penalties for failure to 

maintain health insurance. Under Bob Jones and Americans 

United, the Anti-Injunction Act therefore applies.33

 33 The majority opinion tries to attach significance to the 

different ways that Congress relieved individuals from the mandate. 

Some are excluded from the definition of “applicable individual” 

(for example, illegal aliens), and some are “exempt” (for example, 

low-income individuals). Congress used different methods in part 

because other provisions of the Act distinguish the different 

categories. See Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Pub. L. 

No. 111-148, § 1302(e)(2)(B), 124 Stat. 119, 168 (2010) 

(permitting certain applicable individuals who are exempt from the 

penalty to enroll in catastrophic health insurance plans). In any 

event, this argument is a sideshow: No matter how much the 

majority opinion tries to avoid the point, plaintiffs here (and 

elsewhere) have sued because they don’t want to pay tax penalties 

for failure to have health insurance. And let’s consider the majority 

opinion’s rather fanciful hypothetical (which is not presented by 

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47

Given the clarity of the relevant Supreme Court 

precedent, the Government, which otherwise now argues that 

the Anti-Injunction Act does not bar this suit, still expressly 

disavows the rationale set forth here by the majority opinion. 

As the Solicitor General recently told the Supreme Court: 

“The Anti-Injunction Act, when applicable, bars any suit 

seeking relief that would necessarily preclude the assessment 

or collection of taxes under the Internal Revenue Code, 

regardless of the plaintiff’s professed motivation for the suit.” 

Brief for United States in Opposition at 16, 22 & n.9, Liberty 

Univ. v. Geithner, No. 11-438 (U.S. Oct. 18, 2011) (citing 

Bob Jones, 416 U.S. at 731-32) (internal quotation marks 

omitted) (emphasis added).

Finally, as a last try, the majority opinion suggests that 

these Affordable Care Act tax penalties aren’t designed to

raise revenue for the Government and, for that reason, may 

not qualify as taxes for purposes of the Anti-Injunction Act. 

But the Court in Bob Jones held that regulatory taxes are 

covered by the Anti-Injunction Act as long as they raise some 

revenue. See 416 U.S. at 741 n.12, 743 n.17; cf. Sonzinsky, 

300 U.S. at 514. Here, the Congressional Budget Office has 

estimated the Government will collect about $4 billion a year 

in revenue from the Affordable Care Act’s tax penalties on 

 

this case): If someone who is an “applicable individual” but 

exempt from the penalties nonetheless wants to challenge the Act, 

is found to have standing, and prevails, the necessary implication of 

that litigation victory would be to reduce taxes on those who are not 

exempt. As the Americans United case made clear, however, the 

Anti-Injunction Act would still bar such a suit; that case expressly 

barred a suit that would reduce “anyone’s taxes,” even if it would 

not reduce the plaintiff’s taxes. 416 U.S. at 760. The majority 

opinion’s attempt to wring significance out of the different modes 

of statutory exceptions in the individual mandate provision is 

valiant but unavailing.

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those without health insurance. See Letter from Douglas W. 

Elmendorf, Director, Cong. Budget Office, to Sen. Harry Reid 

tbl.3 (Mar. 11, 2010). To put it in concrete terms, that would 

pay the annual salaries of about 100,000 members of the U.S. 

Military. That’s real revenue.

In short, we cannot avoid the Anti-Injunction Act either 

by characterizing plaintiffs’ complaint as a challenge to the 

mandate and not to the tax penalty, or by characterizing the 

Government’s goal as regulating the decision to buy health 

insurance rather than as raising revenue.

V

Plaintiffs and the Government have suggested, as have a 

host of outside commentators, that the courts should decide 

the constitutionality of the individual mandate provision now 

because the country has a pressing need for an immediate

judicial resolution. I respect that argument. But prudential 

considerations of that sort cannot override the text of a statute 

that limits our jurisdiction. There is no “compelling 

prudential considerations” exception to the Anti-Injunction 

Act. In any event, the relevant prudential considerations on 

balance support our waiting to decide this case until 2015, in 

tax refund or enforcement suits that are brought after the 

mandate has taken effect.

A

Contrary to the suggestions of some, we cannot simply 

disregard the Anti-Injunction Act. The Supreme Court has 

emphasized that the desire for a final judicial decision on the 

constitutionality of a law cannot trump constitutional or 

statutory limits on the judicial power.

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In Raines v. Byrd, for example, the Supreme Court 

considered the constitutionality of the Line Item Veto Act, an 

issue even more fundamental to government operations and 

budgetary issues than the current litigation over the individual 

mandate. But the Court explained that the preference for a 

prompt judicial resolution of the legislation’s constitutionality 

could not overcome constraints on the Court’s jurisdiction –

in that case, the Constitution’s standing requirement: “In the 

light of this overriding and time-honored concern about 

keeping the Judiciary’s power within its proper constitutional 

sphere, we must put aside the natural urge to proceed directly 

to the merits of this important dispute and to ‘settle’ it for the 

sake of convenience and efficiency.” 521 U.S. 811, 820 

(1997) (footnote omitted).

Some have contended, however, that Congress would 

have wanted the courts to decide this case now, 

notwithstanding the Anti-Injunction Act. But Congress did 

not express any such alleged intent in the text of the 

Affordable Care Act. The parties cite no committee report or 

even an individual statement by a Member of Congress 

expressing the view that courts should decide challenges to 

the individual mandate immediately, despite the AntiInjunction Act. So even if we employ the most generous 

approach to legislative history, we find no support for this 

argument. Cf. Puerto Rico Dep’t of Consumer Affairs v. Isla 

Petroleum Corp., 485 U.S. 495, 501 (1988) (“unenacted 

approvals, beliefs, and desires are not laws”).

The invocation of presumed congressional intent is 

particularly inappropriate here because Congress clearly 

devoted careful attention to the tax enforcement details of the 

individual mandate provision. Congress specifically barred 

the IRS from using some of its traditional tools to enforce the 

mandate. But Congress did not create an exception to the 

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Anti-Injunction Act to allow pre-enforcement suits 

challenging the constitutionality of the mandate. Here as 

elsewhere, courts should not upend the balance Congress 

struck in the statutory text.

Some have said that the health insurance industry prefers

a decision now and that Congress would have wanted courts 

to accommodate that concern. That is certainly a reason 

Congress could have decided – and still could decide – to 

exempt this statute from the Anti-Injunction Act.34

Some have suggested that the Anti-Injunction Act does 

not apply because these suits have been brought so far in 

advance of the mandate’s 2014 effective date. But there is no 

“early-bird special” exception to the Anti-Injunction Act. 

And creating such an exception would pose a host of arbitrary 

line-drawing problems. The proper audience for such an

argument is Congress, which can always carve out an 

exemption to the Anti-Injunction Act or set up a special 

judicial review proceeding of the kind employed for the Line

Item Veto Act or the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act. But 

Congress has not done so, and we must adhere to the 

congressional choice reflected in the statutory text. See Bob 

 After all, 

the voice of the health insurance industry was heard when this 

legislation was crafted. But Congress did not exempt the 

individual mandate provision from the Anti-Injunction Act. 

We cannot rewrite the Affordable Care Act to accommodate 

an alleged congressional intent to follow the apparent wishes 

of the health insurance industry.

 34 Bob Jones squarely held that there is no “great harm” 

exception to the Anti-Injunction Act. 416 U.S. 725, 745 (1974). 

The Court emphasized that Congress is the proper body to create 

exceptions. And indeed, after Bob Jones, Congress carved out a 

narrow exception to allow pre-enforcement challenges to the IRS’s 

determinations of tax-exempt status.

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Jones Univ. v. Simon, 416 U.S. 725, 750 (1974) (“But this 

matter is for Congress, which is the appropriate body to weigh 

the relevant, policy-laden considerations, such as the

harshness of the present law . . . .”).

If Congress wants the courts to decide the individual 

mandate suits now, Congress can always remove the 

jurisdictional limit; the Anti-Injunction Act’s jurisdictional 

bar is statutory, not constitutional. Absent such congressional 

action, however, we must adhere to the statutory constraints 

on our jurisdiction no matter how much the parties might 

want us to jump the jurisdictional rails and decide this case 

now.

B

Even if we could alter our interpretation of the AntiInjunction Act based on prudential considerations, those 

considerations on balance support our waiting to decide this 

case until 2015 (in tax refund or enforcement suits brought 

after the mandate has taken effect). By waiting, we would 

respect the bedrock principle of judicial restraint that courts 

avoid prematurely or unnecessarily deciding constitutional 

questions.

The Supreme Court recently summarized those essential 

tenets while declining to reach a vital question about the 

constitutionality of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act:

That constitutional question has attracted ardent 

briefs from dozens of interested parties, but the 

importance of the question does not justify our rushing to 

decide it. Quite the contrary: Our usual practice is to 

avoid the unnecessary resolution of constitutional 

questions. We agree that the district is eligible under the 

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52

Act to seek bailout. We therefore reverse, and do not 

reach the constitutionality of § 5. . . .

In assessing those questions, we are keenly mindful 

of our institutional role. We fully appreciate that judging 

the constitutionality of an Act of Congress is the gravest 

and most delicate duty that this Court is called on to 

perform. The Congress is a coequal branch of 

government whose Members take the same oath we do to 

uphold the Constitution of the United States. . . .

We will not shrink from our duty “as the bulwark of 

a limited constitution against legislative encroachments,” 

The Federalist No. 78, p. 526 (J. Cooke ed. 1961) (A. 

Hamilton), but it is a well-established principle governing 

the prudent exercise of this Court’s jurisdiction that 

normally the Court will not decide a constitutional 

question if there is some other ground upon which to 

dispose of the case.

Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District Number One v. 

Holder, 129 S. Ct. 2504, 2508, 2513 (2009) (some citations, 

internal quotation marks, and brackets omitted).

Although the Northwest Austin Court was addressing the 

constitutional avoidance canon, the general principles it 

articulated about avoiding premature or unnecessary 

constitutional decisions apply to this case as well.35

 35 The Supreme Court has repeated that point many times. 

See, e.g., Elk Grove Unified School District v. Newdow, 542 U.S. 1, 

11 (2004) (“The command to guard jealously and exercise rarely 

our power to make constitutional pronouncements requires strictest 

adherence when matters of great national significance are at stake. 

Even in cases concededly within our jurisdiction under Article III, 

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C

The principle that we avoid premature or unnecessary 

constitutional decisions applies with special force here. 

That’s because if we do not decide the constitutional issue

now, we may never have to decide it.

First, this case could disappear by 2015 because, by then, 

Congress may fix the alleged constitutional shortcoming and 

ensure that the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate 

provision fits comfortably within Congress’s Taxing Clause 

power. To be clear, I do not take a position here on whether 

the statute as currently written is justifiable under the Taxing 

Clause or the Commerce Clause. What I am saying is that the 

only potential Taxing Clause shortcoming in the current 

individual mandate provision appears to be relatively slight. 

And just a minor tweak to the current statutory language 

would definitively establish the law’s constitutionality under 

 

we abide by a series of rules under which we have avoided passing 

upon a large part of all the constitutional questions pressed upon us 

for decision.”) (citation, internal quotation marks, and brackets 

omitted); Valley Forge Christian College v. Americans United for 

Separation of Church & State, Inc., 454 U.S. 464, 474 (1982) (“this 

Court has refrained from passing upon the constitutionality of an 

act of the representative branches unless obliged to do so in the 

proper performance of our judicial function”) (citation, internal 

quotation marks, and brackets omitted); Ashwander v. TVA, 297 

U.S. 288, 346-47 (1936) (Brandeis, J., concurring) (“The Court will 

not anticipate a question of constitutional law in advance of the 

necessity of deciding it. It is not the habit of the Court to decide 

questions of a constitutional nature unless absolutely necessary to a 

decision of the case.”) (footnote, citations, and internal quotation 

marks omitted); cf. Schlesinger v. Reservists Committee to Stop the 

War, 418 U.S. 208 (1974); Ex parte Levitt, 302 U.S. 633 (1937).

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the Taxing Clause (and thereby moot any need to consider the 

Commerce Clause).36

The only reason37

 36 Earlier in this opinion, I explained that the Anti-Injunction 

Act applies to the tax penalty at issue here because of how the 

various statutory provisions, cross-references, and definitions in the 

Tax Code fit together. As the Supreme Court has indicated, the fact 

that the Anti-Injunction Act applies does not necessarily mean the 

tax penalty is permissible under the Taxing Clause. Compare 

Bailey v. George, 259 U.S. 16 (1922) (pre-enforcement challenge to 

exaction is barred by the Anti-Injunction Act), with Bailey v. Drexel 

Furniture Co., 259 U.S. 20 (1922) (in refund suit, holding that the 

same exaction is invalid under the Taxing Clause).

the current statute may not suffice 

under the Taxing Clause is that Section 5000A arguably does 

Plaintiffs’ suit, if successful, would reduce their payment of 

taxes (and the tax is not a criminal prohibition such that the Due 

Process Clause would require a pre-enforcement suit to be 

available). That’s all that’s needed to find the Anti-Injunction Act 

applicable. That is not necessarily all that’s needed to justify a civil 

penalty under the Taxing Clause.

37 It is true that plaintiffs advance a variety of other arguments 

why the Affordable Care Act’s penalties for failing to have health 

insurance cannot be justified under the Taxing Clause. But those 

alternative arguments all appear to be definitively foreclosed by 

Supreme Court precedent. First, contrary to plaintiffs’ contention, 

the Taxing Clause authorizes regulatory taxes, at least so long as 

the tax raises some revenue, as it does here. See United States v. 

Sanchez, 340 U.S. 42, 44-45 (1950); Sonzinsky v. United States, 

300 U.S. 506, 513-14 (1937). Moreover, the fact that an exaction is 

not labeled a tax does not vitiate Congress’s power under the 

Taxing Clause. See License Tax Cases, 72 U.S. 462, 471 (1867) 

(“The granting of a license, therefore, must be regarded as nothing 

more than a mere form of imposing a tax, and of implying nothing 

except that the licensee shall be subject to no penalties under 

national law, if he pays it.”). Nor does it matter that Congress did 

not explicitly cite the Taxing Clause when enacting the legislation. 

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55

not just incentivize certain kinds of lawful behavior but also 

mandates such behavior. Section 5000A provides: “An 

applicable individual shall for each month beginning after 

2013 ensure that the individual, and any dependent of the 

individual who is an applicable individual, is covered under 

minimum essential coverage for such month.” 26 U.S.C. 

§ 5000A(a) (emphasis added).

Therefore, beginning in 2014, a citizen who does not 

maintain health insurance might be acting illegally.

38 The 

Taxing Clause has not traditionally authorized a legal 

prohibition or mandate, as opposed to just a financial 

disincentive or incentive.39

 

See Woods v. Cloyd W. Miller Co., 333 U.S. 138, 144 (1948) (“The 

question of the constitutionality of action taken by Congress does 

not depend on recitals of the power which it undertakes to 

exercise.”). Finally, neither plaintiffs here nor plaintiffs in the other 

Affordable Care Act cases have, so far as I am aware, argued that 

the amount of the Affordable Care Act’s exaction is so high as to be 

a criminal punishment and thus unjustifiable under the Taxing 

Clause for that reason. Nor could they. Cf. Dep’t of Revenue of 

Mont. v. Kurth Ranch, 511 U.S. 767, 778-81 (1994); Sonzinsky, 300 

U.S. at 513.

 Another source of constitutional 

38 At oral argument, counsel for the Government argued that a 

citizen who refused to obtain health insurance would still be acting 

lawfully. If that were true, the mandate would presumably pass 

muster under the Taxing Clause. But it is not evident that the 

statutory language is fairly susceptible to such an interpretation. 

That said, perhaps the canon of constitutional avoidance would

allow such an interpretation of this provision and thereby squeeze it 

within the Taxing Clause. Cf. Northwest Austin Municipal Utility 

District Number One, 129 S. Ct. 2504.

39 The Taxing Clause and the Necessary and Proper Clause 

plainly do support prohibitions and mandates related to compliance 

with tax reporting, filing, and payment obligations, as opposed to 

civil penalty provisions imposing prohibitions or mandates on 

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56

authority – for example, the Commerce Clause – has 

customarily been thought necessary to justify such 

prohibitions or mandates.40

Many have contended, however, that a legal mandate 

with a civil tax penalty for non-compliance is economically 

indistinguishable from a traditional regulatory tax if the 

amounts of the exactions are the same. Such an argument 

assumes that citizens care only about economic incentives and 

not also about complying with The Law. Plaintiffs vigorously 

contest that assertion. According to plaintiffs, the United 

States does not necessarily consist of 310 million people who 

have over-absorbed their Posner and equate (i) a traditional 

regulatory tax that incentivizes or disincentivizes certain 

behavior and (ii) a legal mandate or prohibition accompanied 

by a tax penalty of the same amount. After all, plaintiffs say, 

common sense tells us that many citizens want to be lawabiding (and known as law-abiding), and that their desire to 

 

underlying private behavior (for example, a mandate to have health 

insurance).

40 Although the courts have not had occasion to explain this 

distinction clearly (perhaps because most extant federal 

prohibitions in the social policy arena have been comfortably 

authorized by the Commerce Clause), the apparent difference was 

once cogently described by the Solicitor General: “It may not be 

easy to draw a line of demarcation between a penalty and a tax, but 

the line of demarcation seems to be that, where the statute prohibits 

the doing of an act and as a sanction imposes a pecuniary 

punishment for violating the act, then it is a penalty, and not a tax at 

all; but, where the thing done is not prohibited, but, with respect to 

the privilege of doing it, an excise tax is imposed, it is none the less 

a tax, even though it be, in its practical results, prohibitive.” 

Argument of Solicitor General in Bailey v. Drexel Furniture Co., 

reported in 259 U.S. at 21-22.

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57

be law-abiding affects their behavior.41

But this discussion about the potential problem with the 

Government’s Taxing Clause argument also shows how easily 

Congress could eliminate any such potential problem. For 

example, Congress might keep the current statutory language 

and payment amounts and simply add a provision as basic as: 

“The taxpayer has a lawful choice either to maintain health 

insurance or make the payment to the IRS required by Section 

5000A(a)-(c).” Or Congress might retain the exactions and 

payment amounts as they are but eliminate the legal mandate 

language in Section 5000A, instead providing something to 

the effect of: “An applicable individual without minimum 

essential coverage must make a payment to the IRS on his or 

her tax return in the amounts listed in Section 5000A(c).” Or 

Congress could adopt the approach from the House-passed 

bill, which expressly created a tax incentive and plainly 

satisfied the Taxing Clause. 

 For purposes of the 

Taxing Clause, mandates and prohibitions might be one step 

beyond the traditional kinds of regulatory taxes that the 

Taxing Clause has authorized.

Any of those options – and others as well – would ensure 

that this provision operates as a traditional regulatory tax and 

readily satisfies the Taxing Clause. See United States v. 

Sanchez, 340 U.S. 42, 44 (1950) (even a tax with “regulatory 

character and prohibitive burden” “does not cease to be valid 

merely because it regulates, discourages, or even definitely 

 41 See OFFICE OF TAX POLICY, DEP’T OF THE TREASURY,

REPORT TO THE CONGRESS ON PENALTY AND INTEREST 

PROVISIONS OF THE INTERNAL REVENUE CODE 36 (1999) 

(“[P]enalties clearly signal that noncompliance is not acceptable 

behavior. . . . In establishing social norms and expectations, 

subjecting the noncompliant behavior to any penalty may be as 

important as the exact level of the penalty . . . .”).

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deters the activities taxed”); Sonzinsky v. United States, 300 

U.S. 506, 513 (1937) (“[A]n Act of Congress which on its 

face purports to be an exercise of the taxing power is not any 

the less so because the tax is burdensome or tends to restrict 

or suppress the thing taxed.”); cf., e.g., Affordable Health 

Care for America Act, H.R. 3962, 111th Cong. § 501 (2009) 

(House-passed bill on health care reform imposing a “[t]ax on 

individuals without acceptable health care coverage”); 

Patients’ Choice Act, H.R. 2520, 111th Cong. §§ 301-303 

(2009) (proposing to amend the Tax Code to create a 

refundable tax credit for the purchase of qualifying health 

insurance plans).42

Second, but far more broadly, by 2015 Congress might 

choose to eliminate Section 5000A altogether – that is, 

eliminate this financial disincentive for failing to have health 

insurance. Or the President might not enforce the individual 

mandate provision if the President concludes that enforcing it 

would be unconstitutional.43

 42 To the extent eliminating the legal mandate language would 

decrease the incentive to buy health insurance, the amount of the 

exaction for not having health insurance could be increased (so long 

as it remains a civil exaction) if that were deemed appropriate to 

maintain an equivalent incentive.

 In one of those events, the 

43 Under the Constitution, the President may decline to 

enforce a statute that regulates private individuals when the 

President deems the statute unconstitutional, even if a court has 

held or would hold the statute constitutional. See Freytag v. 

Commissioner, 501 U.S. 868, 906 (1991) (Scalia, J., concurring) 

(the President possesses “the power to veto encroaching laws or 

even to disregard them when they are unconstitutional”) (citation 

omitted). Similarly, Congress may repeal or decline to pass a 

statute based on its own constitutional interpretation even if the 

courts have (or would have) upheld the statute as constitutional. 

This power does not work in reverse, either for the President 

or Congress. In other words, the President may not enforce a 

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courts would likewise never have to opine on the 

constitutional issues presented in this case.

We all recognize the legislative realities that make any 

change unlikely, whether just to “fix” any potential 

constitutional problem or to take more significant action with 

respect to Section 5000A. After all, our constitutional system 

requires action by three entities before any legislative change 

may be approved – House, Senate, and Executive. Therefore, 

it is much harder to pass legislation – even technical fixes –

than to block legislation. That said, there is the possibility of 

such legislative action that could obviate the need for the 

Judiciary to decide this immensely consequential 

constitutional issue.

To be clear, federal courts do not wait to decide 

constitutional cases simply because of the possibility of 

congressional change to the legislation or presidential nonenforcement of what the President concludes is an 

unconstitutional law. Delay on that basis would constitute 

judicial abdication, not judicial restraint. But the discussion 

here has been addressing the question whether there are 

compelling prudential considerations that would justify 

overriding the limits of the Anti-Injunction Act and deciding 

this case now. In considering that specific question, it is 

relevant to note that waiting to decide might mean never

 

statute against a private individual when the statute is deemed 

unconstitutional by the courts. Nor may Congress pass a statute 

and have it enforced against private individuals simply because 

Congress disagrees with the Supreme Court. In those situations, 

the Judiciary has the final word on the meaning of the Constitution. 

See, e.g., Boumediene v. Bush, 553 U.S. 723 (2008); Dickerson v. 

United States, 530 U.S. 428 (2000); United States v. Eichman, 496 

U.S. 310 (1990).

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having to decide, a prospect that supports adherence to the 

Anti-Injunction Act.

D

There is an additional compelling reason to be wary of an 

unnecessary or premature constitutional ruling in this case. 

As I have said, the Government’s Taxing Clause argument 

may have a potential problem because of the statute’s legal 

mandate (although that potential problem is relatively minor 

and could be easily fixed by Congress, as described above). 

Indeed, no court to reach the merits has accepted the 

Government’s Taxing Clause argument. As a result, those 

courts have had to tackle the Government’s Commerce Clause 

submission. 

But the Commerce Clause issue is extremely difficult and 

rife with significant and potentially unforeseen implications 

for the Nation and the Judiciary. Cf. Northwest Austin 

Municipal Utility District Number One, 129 S. Ct. at 2513.44

To uphold the Affordable Care Act’s mandatorypurchase requirement under the Commerce Clause, we would 

have to uphold a law that is unprecedented on the federal 

level in American history. That fact alone counsels the 

Judiciary to exercise great caution. See United States v. 

Lopez, 514 U.S. 549, 580, 583 (1995) (Kennedy, J., 

concurring) (“The statute before us upsets the federal balance 

to a degree that renders it an unconstitutional assertion of the 

commerce power, and our intervention is required. . . . If 

Congress attempts that extension, then at the least we must 

 44 For purposes of this discussion, when referring to the 

Government’s Commerce Clause argument, I am referring to both 

the Commerce Clause and the supplementary Necessary and Proper 

Clause.

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inquire whether the exercise of national power seeks to 

intrude upon an area of traditional state concern. . . . The 

statute now before us forecloses the States from 

experimenting and exercising their own judgment in an area 

to which States lay claim by right of history and expertise, 

and it does so by regulating an activity beyond the realm of 

commerce in the ordinary and usual sense of that term.”); see 

also Printz v. United States, 521 U.S. 898, 905 (1997) (“[I]f, 

as petitioners contend, earlier Congresses avoided use of this 

highly attractive power, we would have reason to believe that 

the power was thought not to exist.”).

In addition, the Government’s position on the Commerce 

Clause carries broad implications – far broader than its 

position on the Taxing Clause. Under the Government’s 

Commerce Clause theory, as it freely acknowledged at oral 

argument, the Government could impose imprisonment or 

other criminal punishment on citizens who do not have health 

insurance. That is a rather jarring prospect. The Affordable 

Care Act does not impose such criminal penalties. But if we 

approve the Affordable Care Act’s mandate under the 

Commerce Clause, we would necessarily be approving 

criminal punishment – including imprisonment – for failure to 

comply not only with this Act but also with future mandatorypurchase requirements.

Moreover, despite the Government’s effort to cabin its 

Commerce Clause argument to mandatory purchases of health 

insurance, there seems no good reason its theory would not 

ultimately extend as well to mandatory purchases of 

retirement accounts, housing accounts, college savings 

accounts, disaster insurance, disability insurance, and life 

insurance, for example. We should hesitate to unnecessarily 

decide a case that could usher in a significant expansion of 

congressional authority with no obvious principled limit. 

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That is particularly so given that the government traditionally 

has achieved its objectives in these areas through Taxing 

Clause legislation that employs customary and permissible tax 

incentives and disincentives on certain behavior. Cf. Lopez,

514 U.S. at 580-83 (Kennedy, J., concurring).

Unlike some other courts that have upheld the mandate 

on Commerce Clause grounds and disclaimed the 

implications, the majority opinion here is quite candid – and 

accurate – in admitting that there is no real limiting principle 

to its Commerce Clause holding. The majority opinion’s 

holding means, for example, that a law replacing Social 

Security with a system of mandatory private retirement 

accounts would be constitutional. So would a law mandating

that parents purchase private college savings accounts. I 

credit the majority opinion for its refreshing candor. But its 

acknowledgement of the extraordinary ramifications of its 

decision expanding Congress’s authority to impose 

mandatory-purchase requirements underscores why I think we 

should be cautious about barreling through jurisdictional 

limits to reach the merits, as the majority opinion does here.

To try to mitigate the dramatic implications of its nolimiting-principle holding, the majority opinion notes that 

Congress is subject to a political check. That’s true, but as the 

Supreme Court has told us time and again, the structural 

principles of the Constitution are more than parchment 

barriers; they protect individual liberty. And the courts 

historically have played an important role in enforcing those 

structural principles and thereby safeguarding individual 

liberty. That Congress is subject to a political check does not 

absolve the Judiciary of its duty to safeguard the 

constitutional structure and individual liberty. See Bond v. 

United States, 131 S. Ct. 2355, 2364-65 (2011); Free 

Enterprise Fund v. Public Co. Accounting Oversight Bd., 130 

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S. Ct. 3138, 3157 (2010); Clinton v. City of New York, 524 

U.S. 417, 449-53 (1998) (Kennedy, J., concurring); Lopez, 

514 U.S. at 575-80 (Kennedy, J., concurring); INS v. Chadha, 

462 U.S. 919, 940-42, 944-59 (1983); see also Morrison v. 

Olson, 487 U.S. 654, 697-734 (1988) (Scalia, J., dissenting). 

Here, Congress’s being subject to a political check thus does 

not do much to mitigate the fact that the majority opinion has 

green-lighted a significant expansion of congressional 

authority – and thus also a potentially significant infringement 

of individual liberty.

Having said all of that, we should be just as cautious 

about prematurely or unnecessarily rejecting the 

Government’s Commerce Clause argument. The reason is 

plain and needs little elaboration: Striking down a federal law 

as beyond Congress’s Commerce Clause authority is a rare, 

extraordinary, and momentous act for a federal court. See 

Lopez, 514 U.S. at 568, 568-75 (Kennedy, J., concurring) 

(exploring Commerce Clause history, which “counsels great 

restraint before the Court determines that the Clause is 

insufficient to support an exercise of the national power”). 

The elected Branches designed this law to help provide 

all Americans with access to affordable health insurance and 

quality health care, vital policy objectives. This legislation 

was enacted, moreover, after a high-profile and vigorous 

national debate. Courts must afford great respect to that 

legislative effort and should be wary of upending it. 

This case also counsels restraint because we may be on 

the leading edge of a shift in how the Federal Government 

goes about furnishing a social safety net for those who are 

old, poor, sick, or disabled and need help. The theory of the 

individual mandate in this law is that private entities will do 

better than government in providing certain social insurance 

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and that mandates will work better than traditional regulatory 

taxes in prompting people to set aside money now to help pay 

for the assistance they might need later. Privatized social 

services combined with mandatory-purchase requirements of 

the kind employed in the individual mandate provision of the 

Affordable Care Act might become a blueprint used by the 

Federal Government over the next generation to partially 

privatize the social safety net and government assistance 

programs and move, at least to some degree, away from the 

tax-and-government-benefit model that is common now. 

Courts naturally should be very careful before interfering with 

the elected Branches’ determination to update how the 

National Government provides such assistance. Cf. Heart of 

Atlanta Motel, Inc. v. United States, 379 U.S. 241 (1964); 

NLRB v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp., 301 U.S. 1 (1937).

The significant implications of a Commerce Clause 

decision in this case – in either side’s favor – lead to this 

point: If we need not decide the Commerce Clause issue now, 

we should not decide the Commerce Clause issue now. I 

therefore would not strain to sidestep the Anti-Injunction Act.

E

To be sure, courts may not shirk their duty to “say what 

the law is” in cases that are properly before them. See 

Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137, 177 (1803). As the 

Supreme Court has famously stated: “With whatever doubts, 

with whatever difficulties, a case may be attended, we must 

decide it, if it be brought before us. We have no more right to 

decline the exercise of jurisdiction which is given, than to 

usurp that which is not given.” Cohens v. Virginia, 19 U.S. 

264, 404 (1821).

And in fulfilling their duties, courts sometimes must 

decide difficult and far-reaching constitutional cases sooner 

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rather than later. See, e.g., Dames & Moore v. Regan, 453 

U.S. 654, 660 (1981); United States v. Nixon, 418 U.S. 683, 

686-87 (1974); Cooper v. Aaron, 358 U.S. 1, 4-5 (1958); 

Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 343 U.S. 579, 584 

(1952).

But history and precedent counsel caution before 

reaching out to decide difficult constitutional questions too 

quickly, especially when the underlying issues are of lasting 

significance. After all, what appears to be obviously correct 

now can look quite different just a few years down the road. 

See W. Va. State Bd. of Educ. v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624 

(1943), overruling Minersville School District v. Gobitis, 310 

U.S. 586 (1940); NLRB v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp., 301 

U.S. 1 (1937) (Hughes, C.J.), backing away from A.L.A. 

Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States, 295 U.S. 495 (1935) 

(Hughes, C.J.).

Between now and 2015, Congress might keep the 

mandate as is and the President may enforce it as is. If that 

happens, the federal courts would resolve the resulting 

constitutional case by our best lights and would not shy away 

from a necessary constitutional decision. But history tells us 

to cross that bridge only if and when we need to. Unlike the 

majority opinion, I would adhere to the text of the AntiInjunction Act and leave these momentous constitutional 

issues for another day – a day that may never come.

* * *

I have the greatest respect for my two colleagues on this 

panel. But my analysis leads me decisively to the conclusion 

that we lack jurisdiction because of the Anti-Injunction Act. I 

therefore would vacate the judgment of the District Court and 

remand with directions that the suit be dismissed for lack of 

jurisdiction. I respectfully dissent.

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