Kennedy will disappoint, but whom and how? (This is no way to run a country.)

Justice Kennedy’s vote on the constitutionality of the individual mandate is bound to be a disappointment regardless of how he votes.

Two decades ago, it was widely expected that he would vote to overturn Roe v. Wade and return state abortion legislation to rational basis review. And he did vote that way . . . only to later switch and vote another way. If Justice Kennedy follows his Casey pattern, that means he will have voted at conference to hold the individual mandate unconstitutional, only to switch his vote some time during writing. That would be a disappointment to many.

But Justice Kennedy’s Casey vote did not work out quite as he anticipated, as his dissent in Stenberg v. Carhart and his opinion for the Court in in Gonzales v. Carhart bear out. Moreover, Justice Kennedy may still be nursing resentment over his Flipper reputation from October 1991 Term (which brought both Casey and Lee v. Weisman). Perhaps he learned from Casey that he should not flip his vote in cases of that magnitude. And if that was his takeaway from Casey for the individual mandate ruling, then he not only voted at conference to hold the individual mandate unconstitutional, but also did not switch to the other side during writing.

Yet Justice Kennedy’s contemplation of a 5-4 split down the lines of partisan appointments may have brought to mind Bush v. Gore . . . leading to no change at all. For Justice Kennedy simply cannot understand why anyone would question the Court’s leanings and rulings from that case alone. In his view, the Bush v. Gore majority was–obviously–only deciding based on its best understanding of the law. And even if Justice Kennedy had worries about public perception, the unpopularity of the individual mandate (which is much less popular now than Al Gore was then) provides some insulation for the Court.

For all these reasons, it will be most interesting to see if Justice Kennedy thinks that stare decisis means the same thing for Raich as it did for Roe.

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PPACA Severability Series, Post 4

Following the Supreme Court oral arguments in the health care litigation, there has been much more after-argument augmention of merits analyses than severability analyses. That is unfortunate because an incorrect approach to severability poses a more significant problem of long-term distortion of the federal judicial role in constitutional adjudication. This PPACA severability series is an attempt to continue the conversation about severability.

The primary obstacle to clear thinking about severability is a pernicious metaphor that describes invalidation as excision, which is in turn understood as a legislative function. The operation of this metaphor can be seen, for example, in a recent article by Tom Campbell, Dean and Donald P. Kennedy Chair in Law, and Professor of Economics, Chapman University: Severability of Statutes, 62 Hastings L.J. 1495 (2011).

The major premise of Dean Campbell’s article is that “[c]ourts legislate when they engage in ‘severability analysis,’ allowing part of a law to continue in force after having struck down other parts as unconstitutional.” [1495] More precisely,  “making something into law that was not precisely the text that had been approved by Congress and signed by the President is exactly what a court does when it exercises severability authority.” [1498-99]

From this characterization of severance as creating new legislation, the rest of Dean Campbell’s argument follows. Because a presidential “line-item veto” that would accomplish such legislative handiwork without bicameralism and presentment is impermissible, so too is judicial severance that operates just like a line-item veto. Dean Campbell accordingly calls for “the complete abolition of the severability doctrine.” [1497] According to Dean Campbell’s proposed approach, the unconstitutionality of one provision of a bill enacted into law would result in the invalidation of the entire bill of which that unconstitutional provision was a part.

As I have previously argued, the legislative characterization of the severability function is endemic in modern scholarly discourse and unreflectively implicit in existing doctrine. If one accepts Dean Campbell’s premise that severance creates new legislation, then his proposal makes sense as a way of enforcing the bicameralism and presentment requirements for creating new legislation. Dean Campbell’s proposal therefore presents a challenge to all those who accept an excision-based framework for judicial review.

In my view, however, the major premise is incorrect. A judicial refusal to enforce is not equivalent to amending the law or to exercising a judicial line-item veto. “When a court holds part of a statute unconstitutional, it issues a judgment saying so (and, in some cases, an injunction against its future enforcement). By virtue of precedent and preclusion, this judgment and the reasoning in support of it prevent the unconstitutional part of the statute from having legal effect going forward. Nothing about the actual text of the statute changes as a direct consequence of judicial action.” 85 N.Y.U. L. Rev. at 747.

The real challenge for those who advocate inseverability is to justify the transformation of (A) judicial refusal to give effect as law to one provision in resolving a case, into (B) a command that nobody (in the judiciary or otherwise) should give effect as law to any other provisions of the bill that contained the unconstitutional provision. I do not see how that justification of turning (A) into (B) can be done consistently with traditional separation of powers principles.

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PPACA Severability Series, Post 3

Severability doctrine is not only a “discretionary destructive device” that “calls on judges to act, consciously, like legislators,” but it also results in the creation of law without accountability.

Suppose that the Supreme Court holds the so-called individual mandate unconstitutional and fully severable. When insurance companies are stuck with guaranteed-issue and community ratings for sicker people, but without the revenue that comes from insuring healthier people, who is responsible for that? Congress, because it used an unconstitutional mechanism and did not include an inseverability provision? The Court, because it refused to hold the mandate inseverable from these other provisions? There is no good way to answer these questions, because the judiciary’s action is formally based on perceived congressional intent. Both Congress and the Court are responsible, and neither are.

The problem is not simply the existence of a law that Congress never enacted and the President never signed. A holding of unconstitutionality and inseverability that obliterated the PPACA entirely would raise a similar problem of accountability. When small businesses that benefit from tax credits in the PPACA or individuals that benefit from the ban on lifetime caps are deprived of the benefits that they currently enjoy under the PPACA, who do they blame? A case can be made against both Congress and the Court, and each institution also has a plausible defense.

The Supreme Court has often noted the connection between liberty and accountability. An important aspect of liberty is self-government, and self-government requires accountability. That is an important theme of the Court’s federalism jurisprudence. And it also underlies the Court’s recognition that the separation of powers also promotes individual liberty. Consider, for example, Justice Kennedy’s opinion for the Court last term in United States v. Bond, which stated:

Separation-of-powers principles are intended, in part, to protect each branch of government from incursion by the others. Yet the dynamic between and among the branches is not the only object of the Constitution’s concern. The structural principles secured by the separation of powers protect the individual as well.

Within the excision-based framework of modern severability doctrine, there is simply no way for the judiciary to avoid illegitimate law creation or law destruction. And the federal judiciary’s presence in the legislative realm violates the separation of powers. “We Americans have a method for making the laws that are over us. We elect representatives to two Houses of Congress, each of which must enact the new law and present it for the approval of a President, whom we also elect.” Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain (Scalia, J., concurring in part and concurring in the judgment). Once these laws are made, the federal judiciary has a proper role of deciding on their enforceability in cases or controversies. That judicial role is powerful, but limited. The limits come from the federal judicial power itself. For too long, modern severability doctrine  has located within the judicial power an avowedly legislative function. In future posts, I will lay out an alternative approach–the original approach to partial unconstitutionality–more deeply rooted in traditional understandings of the federal judicial role.

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PPACA Severability Series, Post 2

When it comes to severability determinations–especially in the absence of a severability clause–the output of any hypothetical legislative intent test asking what Congress would have preferred is purely fictive. The doctrinal formula that generates it is a verbal shell with its meat scraped out and its insides filled with the fluid of judicial discretion. This failure of existing doctrine to provide an intelligible legal guidance is one reason to stop using it.

An even more fundamental reason for the Supreme Court to keep its hands off this destructive doctrinal tool is rooted in the separation of powers. Simply put, the doctrine calls on judges to act, consciously, like legislators.

The non-judicial nature of an inseverability holding came through clearly at oral argument in the healthcare litigation, although the Justices did not appreciate it at the time. Consider the following portion of the oral arguments, in which Edwin Kneedler of the DOJ presses the claim that the Supreme Court lacks authority to consider the continued enforceability of statutory provisions that the plaintiffs lack standing to challenge:

MR. KNEEDLER: Thank you, Mr. Chief Justice, and may it please the Court: There should be no occasion for the Court in this case to consider issues of severability, because as we argue, the — the minimum coverage provision is fully consistent with Article I of the Constitution. But if the Court were to conclude otherwise, it should reject Petitioners’ sweeping proposition that the entire Act must fall if this one provision is held unconstitutional. As an initial matter, we believe the Court should not even consider that question. The vast majority of the provisions of this Act do not even apply to the Petitioners, but instead apply to millions of citizens and businesses who are not before the Court -­

CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: How does your proposal actually work? Your idea is that, well, they can take care of it themselves later. I mean, do you contemplate them bringing litigation and saying — I guess the insurers would be the most obvious ones -­ without — without the mandate, the whole thing falls apart, and we’re going to bear a greater cost, and so the rest of the law should be struck down. And that’s a whole other line of litigation?

MR. KNEEDLER: Well, I — I think the continuing validity of any particular provision would arise in litigation that would otherwise arise under that provision by parties who are actually -­

CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: But what cause of action is it? I’ve never heard of a severability cause of action.

MR. KNEEDLER: Well, in the first place, I don’t — the point isn’t that there has to be an affirmative cause of action to decide this. You could — for example, to use the Medicare reimbursement  issue is one of the things that this Act does is change Medicare reimbursement rates. Well, the place where someone adjudicates the validity of Medicare reimbursement rates is through the special statutory review procedure for that. And the same thing is true of the Anti-Injunction Act -­

JUSTICE SCALIA: Mr. Kneedler, there are some provisions which nobody would have standing to challenge. If the provision is simply an expenditure of Federal money, it doesn’t hurt anybody except the taxpayer, but the taxpayer doesn’t have standing. That — that just continues. Even though it is — it should — it is so closely allied to what’s been struck down that it ought to go as well. But nonetheless, that has to continue because there’s nobody in the world that can challenge it. Can that possibly be the law?

MR. KNEEDLER: I think that proves our point, Justice Scalia. This Court has repeatedly said that just because there’s — no one may have standing to challenge — and particularly like tax credits or taxes which are challenged only after going through the Anti-Injunction Act, just because no one has standing doesn’t mean that someone must. * * *

JUSTICE SCALIA: But those are provisions that have been legitimately enacted. The whole issue here is whether these related provisions have been legitimately enacted, or whether they are so closely allied to one that has been held to be unconstitutional that they also have not been legitimately enacted. You can’t compare that to — to cases dealing with a statute that nobody denies is constitutional.

MR. KNEEDLER: This case is directly parallel to the Printz case, in our view. In that case, the Court struck down several provisions of the Brady Act, but went on to say it had no business addressing the severability of other provisions that did not apply to the people before [the Court].

The questions posed by Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Scalia here can be distilled to two:

(1) If the Court doesn’t address severability in this case, won’t that leave a mess that the federal judiciary might not be able to be sort out in further litigation?

(2) Should the federal judiciary permit provisions in the statute that nobody can challenge in court to stay in effect as law even though they are “closely allied to one that has been held to be unconstitutional”?

The correct answers to these two questions are Yes and Yes.

Yes, it would create a mess for the Supreme Court to hold the so-called individual mandate unconstitutional without addressing the continued enforceability of other PPACA provisions. But that mess is not the federal judiciary’s problem except to the extent that the enforceability of those other PPACA provisions can be challenged in a case or controversy by someone that they injure in a judicially cognizable way. True, there is no “severability cause of action.” But a regulated entity can, in some circumstances, seek a declaratory judgment and injunction on the ground that a federal statute purportedly applicable to it does not have the force of law. If it were a valid legal argument to say that a statutory provision, itself perfectly constitutional, should not be enforceable because Congress would not have enacted it in the absence of another statutory provision that is unconstitutional, then someone can raise that argument in an appropriate pre-enforcement claim for declaratory and injunctive relief. Under current severability doctrine, that could be a valid legal argument. It ought not to be, because the fact Congress would not have enacted the provision should not be allowed to undo the fact that Congress did pass the provision. But whether this is a valid legal argument and whether it ought to be are two different questions.

Yes, the federal judiciary should leave alone statutory provisions that cause no legally cognizable injury to the parties properly before a federal court in a case or controversy. The doctrines that define the case or controversy requirement set the boundaries of the judicial domain. Anything outside those boundaries is none of the federal courts’ business.

As Justice Scalia recognized in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, the Supreme Court sometimes adopts a “Mr. Fix-it Mentality” in which the Court “seems to view it as its mission to “Make Everything Come Out Right, rather than merely to decree the consequences, as far as individual rights are concerned, of the other two branches’s actions and omissions.”  The oral arguments over the severability of the so-called individual mandate reveal a Court tempted to play this role.

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PPACA Severability Series, Post 1

The prospect of the Supreme Court deploying severability doctrine in any high-stakes litigation should fill legalists with dread. And the present challenge to the so-called individual mandate in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is high-stakes litigation.

Severability doctrine is a discretionary destructive device. And when judges wield it to lay waste to legislative handiwork, everyone loses. The only winners are the cynics about law whose cynicism is vindicated by the judiciary’s adventuresome expansion of invalidity beyond unconstitutionality.

My first article-length law review piece, Partial Unconstitutionality, was about severability. I wrote it before the PPACA was enacted and without that legislation in mind. In fact, severability doctrine seemed at the time to be in the backwaters of scholarly and judicial interest. That was typical. Nobody pays attention to severability until it matters, and then the doctrine usually evades scrutiny by remaining in the shadows of the substantive constitutional rulings that occasion its application. Sure, there have been bouts of handwringing about severability–as when the Court was busy striking down New Deal legislation in the 1930s, or when INS v. Chadha‘s constitutional holding threatened over 200 statutes that also contained legislative vetoes in the early 1980s. But life would go on and severability would slink back into the shadows.

The recent oral arguments about the severability of the so-called individual mandate have shone a spotlight on severability. And what we have seen isn’t pretty.

The good news is that the Justices recognize an ugly doctrinal state of affairs. The bad news is that there appears little prospect when working within the assumptions of current doctrine to make it better. Barring some serious rethinking of the doctrine, its use in the health care litigation (if it ends up being used) can only make a bad doctrinal situation worse.

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The Anti-Injunction Act and section 5000A of the tax code (aka “the individual mandate”)–my new paper addressing the puzzle of congressional inactivity

I recently posted to SSRN a draft version of the paper that arose out of my participation in the “Everything But the Merits” symposium on the healthcare litigation held at the University of Richmond School of Law last November (11/11/11). The papers from the symposium will be published in the March 2012 issue of the University of Richmond Law Review.

The title of my paper is The Anti-Injunction Act, Congressional Inactivity, and Pre-Enforcement Challenges to Section 5000A of the Tax Code.

Abstract below.

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The missing argument for Mary Brown’s standing

Just under a month ago, counsel for Mary Brown told the Supreme Court in a letter that her opening brief would explain why she still had standing to challenge the minimum essential coverage provision even though she had recently filed for bankruptcy (and thus would be exempt from the penalty for non-compliance). The opening brief, filed today, asserts that Mary Brown has standing, but provides no argument in support of the claim. With respect to Mary Brown’s standing, the brief states as follows:

After the parties filed their certiorari petitions, Petitioner Brown, whose standing had been conceded by the Government in the Eleventh Circuit (id. 8a), filed a voluntary petition for bankruptcy. See Letter from G. Katsas to D. McNerney (Dec. 7, 2011). Private Petitioners do not believe that Brown’s pending bankruptcy undermines her standing; to the contrary, her worsened financial state exacerbates the degree to which future costs from the mandate are “immediately and directly affect[ing]” her “financial strength[] and fiscal planning.” Clinton v. City of New York, 524 U.S. 417, 431 (1998).

If this is the promised argument, it is sorely lacking. Do the challengers plan on making an argument elsewhere, or do they have no argument to make? The argument should start with an explanation of what future costs imposed by law directly affect the planning of someone who appears to be exempt at present from any future cost imposed by Section 5000A.

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Two related non-merits issues to look at in today’s ACA filings

According to the Supreme Court’s December 8 briefing schedule in the challenges to the Affordable Care Act, the opening briefs are due today with respect to everything but the Medicaid issue. Here are a two related non-merits issues to look at in today’s filings:

1. How does the NFIB’s brief address the standing of the individual plaintiffs? The Wall Street Journal reported back in December on the bankruptcy filing of Mary Brown, who was the only plaintiff that the government conceded had standing to challenge Section 5000A (the minimum essential coverage provision). Ms. Brown’s personal circumstances may render her eligible for an exemption from the penalty for non-compliance with the minimum essential coverage requirement in § 5000A. Earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal reported that the NFIB’s lawyers sought to add as individual plaintiffs two more NFIB members. This is an unusual move, and one that the challengers would not have taken without good reason. (That is not to go so far as to say that the additions should be viewed as an implicit concession about a lack of standing without the to-be-added plaintiffs, only that the lawyers viewed the downside of not seeking to add plaintiffs as higher than the downside of doing so.) In a letter filed with the Supreme Court disclosing Ms. Brown’s bankruptcy, the private plaintiffs said that they would explain in their opening brief why Ms. Brown still had standing. Today is the day they will make good on that promise.
2. How does the court-appointed amicus curiae address the Anti-Injunction Act issue? There are several arguments that Mr. Long can make, and it will be interesting to see his assessment of their relative strength by their positioning in the brief.

These two issues may look unrelated on their face, but there is a connection between the AIA issue and Ms. Brown’s standing. One of the arguments that the challengers have previously advanced is that they are challenging the requirement to have insurance but not the penalty for non-compliance. In their view, the mandate is a “free-standing legal requirement” while the penalty is a means of enforcing it. Presumably, this assertion about the internal separability of §5000A with respect to the mandate and the penalty will also be part of the argument for Ms. Brown’s standing. The argument would presumably be that, although Ms. Brown’s financial hardship exempts her from the penalty (under § 5000A(e)), she is still subject to the legal requirement to have minimum essential coverage.

I’m skeptical that these arguments resting on the internal separability of § 5000A succeed. But I will withhold judgment until I see the best presentation of these arguments in the challengers’ briefs.

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Rivkin & Casey can’t wish away the federal tax AIA

David Rivkin & Lee Casey have an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal that contains some misleading argument about the federal tax Anti-Injunction Act (alternate link here). Here are the key paragraphs:

Finally, the Supreme Court has also agreed to consider one of the highly technical arguments raised in the case, whether the federal Anti-Injunction Act (AIA) prohibits a challenge to the individual mandate before the requirement actually takes effect in 2014. This issue has always been a red herring, arising because the government tried to argue that the individual mandate can be justified under Congress’s power to tax, even if it is insupportable under the power to regulate interstate commerce.

Virtually every lower court to consider ObamaCare—both those that have struck down the law as unconstitutional and those that have upheld it—has agreed that the AIA does not apply here. There is every reason to believe that the Supreme Court will do the same. The AIA was designed to protect federal tax-collection activities, generally requiring that a tax be paid before its legality can be challenged in court. The mandate, of course, is not a tax—but an affirmative regulatory requirement. It is enforced by a penalty. The only connection with the federal tax apparatus is that the penalty will be collected by the Internal Revenue Service from tax refunds otherwise due to violators, and its application here would only postpone challenges to the individual mandate to 2014.

A few problems with these two paragraphs:

(1) The federal tax AIA bar does not arise “because the government tried to argue that the individual mandate can be justified under Congress’s power to tax.” In fact, such an assertion is doubly wrong. First, the issue arises because the statutory text of the ACA requires that the tax penalty be assessed and collected in the same manner as other tax penalties that cannot be challenged pre-enforcement because of the federal tax Anti-Injunction Act. Second, Rivkin & Casey’s opposing counsel disclaim a connection between the constitutional justification of the tax penalty as a tax and the operation of the AIA as a bar. Although one would not know it (and would probably think the opposite) from reading the Rivkin & Casey op-ed, the Supreme Court has held that a challenge to a penalty may be barred by the AIA even if the penalty is not “justified under Congress’s power to tax.”

(2) The split on the AIA in the circuit courts of appeals is 2-1, the same as the split on the unconstitutionality of the individual mandate. If these splits were predictive, then Rivkin & Casey should predict that their challenge will lose on the merits.

(3) The connection between the tax penalty for non-compliance with the insurance requirement and the “federal tax apparatus” is not limited to the means of enforcement. The calculation of the penalty (and therefore the assessment of the amount due on one’s tax return) depends on other elements of an applicable individual’s tax return.

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Alternative state standing theory #1: indirect injury from incremental expenditures attributable to mandate compliance through Medicaid enrollment

As explained in a prior post, the jurisdictional infirmities exposed by the Fourth Circuit’s rulings in Virginia v. Sebelius and Liberty University v. Geithner should bring renewed attention to the alternative state standing theories in Florida v. HHS not yet addressed by any court. There are two such theories.  This post discusses the first, and a later post will examine the second.

The states’ lead theory is one of indirect injury from the incremental Medicaid expenditures each state will have to make when presently uninsured individuals comply with the mandate by enrolling in Medicaid. See States’ 11th Cir. Br. at 67-69.

The federal government has argued that this allegation of indirect injury is insufficient as a matter of law, that the claimed injury rests on speculation, and that any potential injury from individuals’ compliance with the mandate is neither actual nor imminent. Additionally, relying on Pennsylvania v. New Jersey, 426 U.S. 660 (1976), the federal government has argued that “it is difficult to see how a State can claim injury on the ground that its citizens choose to accept benefits the State offers them under State law. Reply to Mot. to Dismiss at 13.

The distinction between direct and indirect injuries in the state standing context is traceable to Florida v. Mellon, in which Florida sought to challenge a federal tax on the ground that it would “have the result of inducing potential taxpayers to withdraw property from the state, thereby diminishing the subjects upon which the state power of taxation may operate.” 273 U.S. 12, 17-18 (1927). The Court held that Florida could not go forward with the suit because the State was not in immediate danger of sustaining “any direct injury as the result of the enforcement of the act in question.” Id. at 18. In short, the Court drew a line between direct and indirect injury, and held that it lacked jurisdiction because the claimed fiscal injury arising by virtue of the actions of private citizens in response to the federal law was indirect.

While the line between indirect and direct may be hard to identify in certain cases, the distinction seems administrable enough to foreclose the claimed injury to states resulting from individuals’ compliance with the individual mandate. Recall, also, that states are not permitted to sue the federal government as parens patriae. Allowing states to rely on indirect fiscal injury could provide for easy circumvention of that limitation.

In attacking the states’ indirect injury argument as speculative, the federal government has argued that (i) the pre-mandate status quo already imposes costs on the states in the form of uncompensated care; and (ii), moving more people into insurance may result in a net reduction of costs borne by the states even though some of that insurance is state-provided insurance through Medicaid. The federal government has also pointed to circuit court cases denying standing to states on the ground that the complained-of fiscal effects were too attenuated. See Pennsylvania v. Kleppe, 533 F.2d 668, 672 (D.C. Cir. 1976); Iowa v. Block, 771 F.2d 347, 352-54 (8th Cir. 1985).

If the Supreme Court were to consider this speculation argument, it is unclear (from the filings I have reviewed, anyway) whether the factual record would be sufficiently developed to ground a prediction about the effects of the mandate on state fiscs (which are likely to vary from state to state). If the record were to be found insufficiently developed, that would cut against the states because it is their burden to establish standing.

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Congress can and should enact a statutory fix for the Tax Anti-Injunction Act defect in the private-party constitutional challenges to the individual mandate

Regardless of what one thinks about the constitutionality of the individual mandate in the Affordable Care Act, there appears to be an emerging bipartisan consensus that (1) its constitutionality should be resolved by the Supreme Court, and (2) the Supreme Court should act sooner rather than later (i.e., by the end of the October 2011 Term rather than in some later term). For example, the news coverage here in Virginia after yesterday’s rulings dismissing Virginia’s challenge and dismissing Liberty University’s challenge included statements urging Supreme Court review by both Republican Governor Bob McDonnell and Democrat Senator Mark Warner (relevant statements quoted below if you don’t want to click through).

In light of yesterday’s rulings, however, there is a real possibility that the Supreme Court could conclude that it lacks jurisdiction to rule on any of the challenges to the individual mandate. Challenges by the states have been dogged by questions about jurisdiction from the outset. The Fourth Circuit’s answer to some of those questions knocked out Virginia’s case. The 26-state mandate challenge in Florida v. HHS has so far dodged jurisdictional bullets because of the presence in that case of private parties, whose standing to challenge the mandate has generally been accepted by the federal courts. But yesterday’s Fourth Circuit ruling in Liberty University v. Geithner has breathed new life into a private-plaintiff jurisdictional problem that the parties to the mandate challenges had left for dead. Specifically, the Fourth Circuit held that the Tax Anti-Injunction Act prohibited individuals subject to the mandate from bringing a pre-enforcement challenge because such a suit was one to restrain the assessment or collection of a tax.

If there is a jurisdictional problem preventing both the private plaintiffs (who are subject to the individual mandate) and the State plaintiffs (who are not subject to the individual mandate) from having a federal court hear their constitutional challenges, then the Supreme Court cannot get to the merits of the mandate challenges any time soon.

One response may be to hope that the Supreme Court reads the Tax Anti-Injunction Act differently from the Fourth Circuit. That response may rest on wishful thinking. I need to study the relevant precedents more closely than I have previously, but Judge Motz’s opinion strikes me as persuasive. (See also the amicus brief filed by two former Commissioners of the IRS, Mortimer Caplin and Sheldon Cohen.)

In any event, there is no need to take a chance and rest the possibility of a mandate-challenge merits decision on speculation about how the Supreme Court will resolve the legal uncertainty about application of the Tax Anti-Injunction Act. The Act sets forth a statutory limitation that Congress can and should change to allow a pre-enforcement challenge to the individual mandate. Importantly, it appears that Congress can make this change effective immediately and can make clear that the change preserves jurisdiction over private-party challenges to the individual mandate that have already been filed. See Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, 548 U.S. 557, 576 (2006) (“We have in the past ‘applied intervening statutes conferring or ousting jurisdiction, whether or not jurisdiction lay when the underlying conduct occurred or when the suit was filed.'”), quoting Landgraf v. USI Film Products, 511 U.S. 244, 274 (1994); see also Landgraf v. USI Film Products, 511 U.S. 244, 274 (1994) (“[I]n Andrus v. Charlestone Stone Products Co., 436 U.S. 604, 607-608, n. 6 (1978), we held that, because a statute passed while the case was pending on appeal had eliminated the amount in controversy requirement for federal question cases, the fact that respondent had failed to allege $10,000 in controversy at the commencement of the action was ‘now of no moment.'”). (My assessment of the legal soundness of a “retroactive” jurisdictional cure is based on just a little bit of digging around thus far, and I have not yet vetted the assessment with others, but the foregoing authorities appear to support it. Critical commentary is, of course, welcome on this or any other aspect of the post.)

In sum: The constitutional merits of the challenges to the individual mandate have divided largely (though not cleanly) along party lines, but there appears to be bipartisan agreement that the merits should be decided soon. A legislative fix to the Tax Anti-Injunction Act can eliminate a jurisdictional barrier that presents a serious possibility of causing extensive delay. Congress can and should get rid of that barrier and clear the way to prompt Supreme Court resolution of the constitutional challenges to the individual mandate.

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Statement by Gov. McDonnell (R-VA) on the need for prompt Supreme Court review of the constitutionality of the individual mandate:

“As federal courts across the country continue to come to differing conclusions on the merits of cases arguing the unconstitutionality of the federal health care law, today’s decision further exemplifies why these cases should be expedited to the nation’s highest court.  It is the Supreme Court that will ultimately determine whether the federal mandate on every citizen to purchase health insurance violates the U.S. Constitution.  States and businesses continue to expend time and money and languish in uncertainty as they try to come into compliance with a law that may ultimately be ruled unconstitutional. It is exasperating that the President and the Justice Department oppose a prompt resolution of this case through an expedited appeal.  America needs finality in this case.”

Statement by Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) on the desirability of prompt Supreme Court review of the constitutionality of the individual mandate:

“This is going to end up getting decided by the Supreme Court and candidly, I hope, the sooner the better. I do believe there are a lot of parts of the health care reform law that make sense. I think there are some parts that need to be corrected.”

[Note: The Warner quotation comes directly from the linked video. The accompanying text misquotes Sen. Warner.]

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Why the justiciability of the states’ challenge to the individual mandate in Florida v. HHS may matter

If the Fourth Circuit’s interpretation of the Anti-Injunction Act were to be adopted by the Supreme Court, that would knock out all the private party challenges to the individual mandate. That would return attention to the question of whether the states’ challenge to the individual mandate is justiciable.

The Virginia approach of relying on a conflicting state statute has all sorts of problems, including those identified by the Fourth Circuit in Virginia v. Sebelius.

The states in Florida v. HHS have developed additional theories of standing that do not require conflicting state statutes. They have done so because necessity is the mother of invention; the necessity arises from the simple fact that most of the state plaintiffs seeking to challenge the individual mandate do not have an anti-mandate state law like Virginia’s Health Care Freedom Act.

I have argued in an amicus curiae brief in the Eleventh Circuit and in The Ghost that Slayed the Mandate that Florida’s alternative theories do not succeed in establishing the justiciability of the states’ challenge to the individual mandate. The Eleventh Circuit said it did not need to address state standing. The issue was “purely academic,” said they, because at least one private plaintiff had standing and one is enough. I criticized that reasoning in an earlier post that focused on the relationship between inseverability and standing.

I can now add another criticism: It may very well be that there is no subject-matter jurisdiction over the private plaintiffs’ challenges because of the Anti-Injunction Act. If the AIA blocks the private plaintiff challenges, then the only way to reach the merits is by adjudicating the states’ challenge to the individual mandate. The states can likely get around the AIA with South Carolina v. Regan, 465 U.S. 367 (1984). Consequently, the jurisdictional action going forward should focus not only on the AIA but also on the states’ theories for why they can challenge a statutory provision that imposes no obligation on them.

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