Opinion ID: 223249
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Unprecedented Nature of the Individual Mandate

Text: Both parties have cited extensively to previous Supreme Court opinions defining the scope of the Commerce Clause. Economic mandates such as the one contained in the Act are so unprecedented, however, that the government has been unable, either in its briefs or at oral argument, to point this Court to Supreme Court precedent that addresses their constitutionality. Nor does our independent review reveal such a precedent. The Supreme Court has sustained Congress's authority to regulate steamboat traffic, Gibbons, 22 U.S. 1; trafficking of lottery tickets across state lines, The Lottery Case, 188 U.S. 321, 23 S.Ct. 321, 47 L.Ed. 492 (1903); and carrying a woman across state lines for immoral purposes, Hoke v. United States, 227 U.S. 308, 320, 33 S.Ct. 281, 283, 57 L.Ed. 523 (1913). Through the Commerce Clause, Congress may prevent the interstate transportation of liquor, United States v. Simpson, 252 U.S. 465, 40 S.Ct. 364, 64 L.Ed. 665 (1920); punish an automobile thief who crosses state lines, Brooks v. United States, 267 U.S. 432, 45 S.Ct. 345, 69 L.Ed. 699 (1925); and prevent diseased herds of cattle from bringing their contagion from Georgia to Florida, Thornton v. United States, 271 U.S. 414, 46 S.Ct. 585, 70 L.Ed. 1013 (1926). In the modern era, the Commerce Clause has been used to regulate labor practices, Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp., 301 U.S. 1, 57 S.Ct. 615; impose minimum working conditions, Darby, 312 U.S. 100, 61 S.Ct. 451; limit the production of wheat for home consumption, Wickard, 317 U.S. 111, 63 S.Ct. 82; regulate the terms of insurance contracts, South-Eastern Underwriters, 322 U.S. 533, 64 S.Ct. 1162; prevent discrimination in hotel accommodations, Heart of Atlanta Motel, 379 U.S. 241, 85 S.Ct. 348, and restaurant services, Katzenbach, 379 U.S. 294, 85 S.Ct. 377; and prevent the home production of marijuana for medical purposes, Raich, 545 U.S. 1, 125 S.Ct. 2195. What the Court has never done is interpret the Commerce Clause to allow Congress to dictate the financial decisions of Americans through an economic mandate. Both the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and the Congressional Research Service (CRS) have commented on the unprecedented nature of the individual mandate. When the idea of an individual mandate to purchase health insurance was first floated in 1994, the CBO stated that a mandate requiring all individuals to purchase health insurance would be an unprecedented form of federal action. SPEC. STUDIES DIV., CONG. BUDGET OFFICE, THE BUDGETARY TREATMENT OF AN INDIVIDUAL MANDATE TO BUY HEALTH INSURANCE 1 (1994) [hereinafter CBO MANDATE MEMO]. The CBO observed that Congress has never required people to buy any good or service as a condition of lawful residence in the United States, noting that mandates typically apply to people as parties to economic transactions, rather than as members of society. Id. at 1-2. Meanwhile, in reviewing the present legislation in 2009, the CRS warned: Despite the breadth of powers that have been exercised under the Commerce Clause, it is unclear whether the clause would provide a solid constitutional foundation for legislation containing a requirement to have health insurance. Whether such a requirement would be constitutional under the Commerce Clause is perhaps the most challenging question posed by such a proposal, as it is a novel issue whether Congress may use this clause to require an individual to purchase a good or a service. JENNIFER STAMAN & CYNTHIA BROUGHER, CONG. RESEARCH SERV., R. 40725, REQUIRING INDIVIDUALS TO OBTAIN HEALTH INSURANCE: A CONSTITUTIONAL ANALYSIS 3 (2009). The fact that Congress has never before exercised this supposed authority is telling. As the Supreme Court has noted, the utter lack of statutes imposing obligations on the States' executive (notwithstanding the attractiveness of that course to Congress), suggests an assumed absence of such power. Printz, 521 U.S. at 907-08, 117 S.Ct. at 2371; see also Va. Office for Prot. & Advocacy v. Stewart, 563 U.S.___, ___, 131 S.Ct. 1632, 1641, 179 L.Ed.2d 675 (2011) (Lack of historical precedent can indicate a constitutional infirmity.); Alden v. Maine, 527 U.S. 706, 743-44, 119 S.Ct. 2240, 2261, 144 L.Ed.2d 636 (1999). Few powers, if any, could be more attractive to Congress than compelling the purchase of certain products. Yet even if we focus on the modern era, when congressional power under the Commerce Clause has been at its height, Congress still has not asserted this authority. Even in the face of a Great Depression, a World War, a Cold War, recessions, oil shocks, inflation, and unemployment, Congress never sought to require the purchase of wheat or war bonds, force a higher savings rate or greater consumption of American goods, or require every American to purchase a more fuel efficient vehicle. [87] See Printz, 521 U.S. at 905, 117 S.Ct. at 2370 ([I]f . . . earlier Congresses avoided use of this highly attractive power, we would have reason to believe that the power was thought not to exist.). Traditionally, Congress has sought to encourage commercial activity it favors while discouraging what it does not. This is instructive. Not only have prior congressional actions not asserted the power now claimed, they contain some indication of precisely the opposite assumption. Id. at 910, 117 S.Ct. at 2372. Instead of requiring action, Congress has sought to encourage it. The instances of such encouragement are ubiquitous, but the example of flood insurance provides a particularly relevant illustration of how the individual mandate departs from conventional exercises of congressional power. In passing the National Flood Insurance Act of 1968, Congress recognized that from time to time flood disasters have created personal hardships and economic distress which have required unforeseen disaster relief measures and have placed an increasing burden on the Nation's resources. 42 U.S.C. § 4001(a)(1). Despite considerable expenditures on public programs designed to prevent floods, those programs had not been sufficient to protect adequately against growing exposure to future flood losses. Id. § 4001(a)(2). In response to this problem, however, Congress did not require everyone who owns a house in a flood plain to purchase flood insurance. In fact, Congress did not even require anyone who chooses to build a new house in a flood plain to buy insurance. Rather, Congress created a series of incentives designed to encourage voluntary purchase of flood insurance. These incentives included requiring flood insurance before the home owner could receive federal financial assistance or federally regulated loans. See id. § 4012a(a), (b)(1). Without an individual mandate, the flood insurance program has largely been a failure. See Bryant J. Spann, Note, Going Down for the Third Time: Senator Kerry's Reform Bill Could Save the Drowning National Flood Insurance Program, 28 GA. L. REV. 593, 597 (1994) (One of the most astounding facts to surface from the Midwestern flood of 1993 was that so few homeowners eligible for flood insurance actually had it. Of the states impacted by the flood, Illinois had the highest percentage of eligible households covered, with 8.7%.). One key reason for this low participation is not surprising. Disaster relief, as a political issue, is almost invincible. No politician wants to be on record as opposing disaster relief, particularly for his or her own constituents. Id. at 602. People living in a flood plain know that even if they do not have insurance, they can count on the virtually guaranteed availability of federal funds. [88] Nevertheless, despite the unpredictability of flooding, the inevitability that floods will strike flood plains, and the cost shifting inherent in uninsured property owners seeking disaster relief funds, Congress has never taken the obvious and expedient step of invoking the power the government now argues it has and forcing all property owners in flood plains to purchase insurance. [89] Contrast flood insurance with the very few instances of activity in which Congress has compelled Americans to engage solely as a consequence of being citizens living in the United States. Given the attractiveness of the power to compel behavior in order to solve important problems, we find it illuminating that Americans have, historically, been subject only to a limited set of personal mandates: serving on juries, registering for the draft, filing tax returns, and responding to the census. These mandates are in the nature of duties owed to the government attendant to citizenship, and they contain clear foundations in the constitutional text. [90] Additionally, all these mandates involve a citizen directly interacting with the government, whereas the individual mandate requires an individual to enter into a compulsory contract with a private company. In these respects, the individual mandate is a sharp departure from all prior exercises of federal power. The draft is an excellent example of this sort of duty, particularly as it is one upon which the Supreme Court has spoken. In the Selective Draft Law Cases, the Supreme Court reviewed challenges to the draft instituted in 1917 upon the entry of the United States into World War I. 245 U.S. 366, 38 S.Ct. 159, 62 L.Ed. 349 (1918). The Court rejected these challenges on several grounds, primarily based on the long history of the draft both in the United States and other nations. Id. at 379-87, 38 S.Ct. at 162-64. But it also pointed to the relationship between citizens and government: It may not be doubted that the very [c]onception of a just government and its duty to the citizen includes the reciprocal obligation of the citizen to render military service in case of need and the right to compel it. Id. at 378, 38 S.Ct. at 161. It is striking by comparison how very different this economic mandate is from the draft. First, it does not represent the solution to a duty owed to the government as a condition of citizenship. Moreover, unlike the draft, it has no basis in the history of our nation, much less a long and storied one. Until Congress passed the Act, the power to regulate commerce had not included the authority to issue an economic mandate. Now Congress seeks not only the power to reach a new class of activityfinancial decisions whose effects are felt some time in the futurebut it wishes to do so through a heretofore untested power: an economic mandate. Having established the unprecedented nature of the individual mandate and the lack of any Supreme Court case addressing this issue, we are left to apply some basic Commerce Clause principles derived largely from Wickard, Lopez, Morrison, and Raich.