Printz and case-based limits on severability determinations

Perhaps the Solicitor General will have more luck with a different aspect of Printz tomorrow?

One of the more pointed lines of questioning directed toward the Solicitor General regarding the constitutionality of Section 5000A came from Justice Scalia with respect to “Proper” in “Necessary and Proper”:

JUSTICE SCALIA: Wait. That’s — it’s both  “Necessary and Proper.” What you just said addresses  what’s necessary. Yes, has to be reasonably adapted. Necessary does not mean essential, just reasonably adapted. But in addition to being necessary, it has to  be proper. And we’ve held in two cases that something that was reasonably adapted was not proper, because it violated the sovereignty of the States, which was implicit in the constitutional structure. The argument here is that this also is — may be necessary, but it’s not proper, because it violates an equally evident principle in the Constitution, which is that the Federal Government is not supposed to be a government that has all powers; that it’s supposed to be a government of limited powers. And that’s what all this questioning has been about. What — what is left? If the government can do this, what — what else can it not do?

GENERAL VERRILLI: This does not violate the norm of proper as this Court articulated it in Printz or in New York because it does not interfere with the States as sovereigns. This is a regulation that — this
is a regulation -­

JUSTICE SCALIA: No, that wasn’t my point. That is not the only constitutional principle that
exists.

GENERAL VERRILLI: But it -­

JUSTICE SCALIA: An equally evident constitutional principle is the principle that the Federal Government is a government of enumerated powers and that the vast majority of powers remain in the
States and do not belong to the Federal Government. Do  you acknowledge that that’s a principle?

GENERAL VERRILLI: Of course we do, Your Honor.

JUSTICE SCALIA: Okay. That’s what we are talking about here.

Justice Scalia’s expansive invocation of quasi-Printz suggests a distinction that he perceives between HHS v. Florida and Gonzales v. Raich.

There is another aspect of Printz that the Solicitor General will rely on tomorrow with respect to severability. That is the Court’s’ refusal to adjudicate the severability of provisions that only burdened parties not before the court. After holding unconstitutional a provision requiring CLEOs (or Chief Law Enforcement Officers) to perform background checks on firearms purchasers, there remained a severability question whether firearms dealers remained obligated to forward to the CLEO the requisite background information and to wait five days before consummating the sale. These steps seemed a pointless formality after the invalidation of the CLEOs’ obligation to do background checks. But the Court’s opinion refused to address the issue:

These are important questions, but we have no business answering them in these cases. These provisions burden only firearms dealers and purchasers, and no plaintiff in either of those categories is before us here. We decline to speculate regarding the rights and obligations of parties not before the Court.

Relying on this aspect of Printz, the federal government has argued that the Supreme Court has no authority to decide the severability of provisions, even the guaranteed issue and community rating requirements, that do not burden the parties to the case.

Printz aside, I think the federal government is right about this as a matter of first principles. Unfortunately, severability has long been an area where first principles have been ignored. Perhaps tomorrow’s arguments will provide a chance for the Court to come face to face with the many problems of its severability doctrine, including the frankly legislative determinations it authorizes the judiciary to undertake.

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If a member of an Indian tribe has no standing to challenge the minimum coverage provision, does Mary Brown?

In the previous post, I asked whether a member of an Indian tribe has standing to bring a constitutional challenge to the minimum coverage provision in § 5000A of the tax code (aka the “individual mandate in Obamacare”). A member of an Indian tribe is in an unusual position under § 5000A. She is obligated to have minimum essential coverage, but she is exempt from the penalty for non-compliance. See 26 U.S.C. § 5000A(e)(3). Assuming that the penalty for non-compliance is the only legal consequence for not having minimum essential coverage, I do not see how she would have standing to bring a constitutional challenge to the requirement that she have minimum essential coverage.

If that is right, then what about Mary Brown? She is one of the private plaintiffs in the constitutional challenge to § 5000A to be decided by the Supreme Court. Ms. Brown’s lawyers have notified the Supreme Court that she has filed a petition for bankruptcy. Although there is not enough public information to make a conclusive determination, Ms. Brown’s financial situation probably qualifies her for a penalty exemption in § 5000A(e). If Ms. Brown does fall within one of the penalty exemptions, are there any arguments to support her standing that differ from those available to the member of an Indian tribe?

One that comes to mind is that financial circumstances are subject to change, whereas tribe membership is stable throughout one’s life. If a person’s qualification for exemption varies from month to month, then that person comes in and out of the legal crosshairs of someone with whom one can have a justiciable controversy. This difference is relevant, because someone permanently exempt has no legal adversity with anyone that would give rise to a justiciable controversy. The sometimes-exempt person, by contrast, sometimes does have such legal adversity.

The justiciability problem posed by a sometimes-exempt person is best thought of as a mootness problem rather than a standing problem. The general rule is that standing is assessed as of the time of filing. If the sometimes-exempt person was not exempt as of the time of filing, and the person otherwise had standing, then a change giving rise to that person’s exemption presents a problem of mootness. That doctrine is more flexible than standing. In Friends of Earth, Inc. v. Laidlaw Environmental Services (TOC), Inc., 528 U.S. 167 (2000), for example, Justice Ginsburg’s opinion for the Court expressed openness to an “argument from sunk costs.”

That is as far as I’ve taken the analysis for now. As always, I welcome suggestions, corrections, and other comments.

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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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Fourth Circuit rejects constitutional challenges to ACA provisions . . . regarding black lung benefits

The Fourth Circuit yesterday rejected constitutional and other challenges to various changes made to the Black Lung Benefits Act by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care (“PPACA” or “Affordable Care Act” or “ACA” or “Obamacare” and so on). Judge Wilkinson wrote the opinion in West Virginia CWP Fund v. Stacy, which was joined in by Chief Judge Traxler and Judge Wynn.

The principal constitutional challenges were substantive due process and Takings Clause claims regarding a statutory provision that extended certain benefits to claims that were filed after January 1, 2005 and pending on or after the date of the ACA’s enactment (March 23, 2010). The challengers sought to distinguish Usery v. Turner Elkhorn Mining Co., 428 U.S. 1 (1976), in which the Supreme Court rejected a due process challenge to the Black Lung Benefits Act. The challengers sought to analogize their challenge to Eastern Enterprises v. Apfel, 524 U.S. 498 (1998), in which five Justices voted to hold unconstitutional a certain retroactive imposition of liability in the coal industry. The five Justices in the Eastern Enterprises majority did not agree on a theory of unconstitutionality. Four found a violation of the Takings Clause, while one (Justice Kennedy) found a substantive due process violation. (The remaining four found no constitutional flaw.)

Judge Wilkinson’s opinion applies Usery v. Turner Elkhorn Mining, distinguishes Eastern Enterprises, and in the course of doing so, also reiterates the Fourth Circuit’s view that the rejection of a Takings Clause theory by five Justices–on the ground that a simple obligation to pay does not amount to a taking–“is more authoritative than the plurality’s conclusion” that the imposition of such an obligation could amount to a taking.

The opinion contains two interesting passages regarding the Affordable Care Act more generally. First, Judge Wilkinson concludes in a footnote that the BLBA amendments in the ACA would survive as severable even if the Supreme Court were to hold the individual mandate unconstitutional (as it has been asked to do). Second, Judge Wilkinson resoundingly rejects, because it threatens the separation of powers, the challengers’ argument that the BLBA amendments only passed due to their inclusion in massive and unwieldy ACA:

[P]etitioner’s argument that the BLBA amendments only passed due to their “inclusion . . . in approximately 2,700 pages of healthcare legislation,” Petitioner’s Reply Br. at 27-28, threatens the separation of powers by inviting courts to scrutinize the process by which a coordinate branch of government goes about its business. Likewise, it invites every loser in a legislative fight to contest not only the constitutionality of Congress’s final product, but the way that Congress went about enacting it. Such a plunge into the depths of Capitol Hill should be undertaken—if at all—only in the most extraordinary of circumstances, circumstances that are plainly not presented here. In sum, the difficulties with petitioner’s view are evident and legion.

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ACA Litigation: Conference tomorrow in DC, and the day after tomorrow in Richmond

Brad Joondeph has a reminder at ACA Litigation Blog that tomorrow’s conference at the Supreme Court will include discussion of five of the six cert petitions addressing the constitutionality of the minimum essential coverage provision. I add to that a reminder that the University of Richmond Law School is hosting a conference about the ACA litigation on Friday November 11. This conference is about “everything but the merits” of the healthcare litigation. Details available in the conference brochure.

(Note to Virginia lawyers: The program has been approved for 6 MCLE credits; registration is free.)

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Virginia v. Sebelius is about limited federal court jurisdiction, not disrespect of state legislation

The Fourth Circuit’s dismissal of Virginia’s challenge to the individual mandate in the Affordable Care Act rests on a straightforward understanding of the limited power of federal courts to resolve questions of constitutional law. Federal courts do not resolve abstract disputes or issue advisory opinions; they resolve only cases or controversies. And there was no case or controversy between Virginia and the federal government regarding the enforceability of the individual mandate.

In their responses to the ruling, Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell and Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli have painted the decision as a blow to federalism, with a federal court showing disrespect to state legislation.

Governor McDonnell:

” To dismiss a Virginia statute as a basis for standing, declaring it to be ‘quintessentially political,’ and asserting that a state cannot be a ‘constitutional watchdog’ undermines our precious principles of federalism.”

Attorney General Cuccinelli:

“Not only does the court’s opinion reject the role of the states envisioned by the Constitution, it dismisses an act of the Virginia General Assembly—the Health Care Freedom Act—as a mere pretense or pretext. It is unfortunate that the court would be so dismissive of a piece of legislation that passed both houses of a divided legislature by overwhelming margins with broad, bipartisan support.”

These responses miss the mark. The Fourth Circuit reasoned that Virginia did not identify “any plausible, much less imminent, enforcement of the [Virginia Health Care Freedom Act] that might conflict with the individual mandate.” The court properly concluded that to use such a law as a basis for asking a federal court to opine on the validity of a provision of federal law that is unenforceable against the state “would convert the federal judiciary into a ‘forum’ for the vindication of a state’s ‘generalized grievances about the conduct of government.'”

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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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