A perspective from 1890 on nullification and the role of the federal courts, in light of the States’ challenge to the minimum essential coverage provision

The Supreme Court granted a motion last week to add two individuals to the case it will hear addressing the constitutionality of the minimum essential coverage provision in the Affordable Care Act. (See Lyle Denniston’s post on the order at SCOTUSBlog.) This makes it less likely that the Court will need to reach the question whether the States can bring a justiciable challenge to that provision, which imposes obligations on individuals but not on States. That is all for the good, as the States do not have standing.

In the course of reading on an unrelated subject, I came across the following quotation that I thought worth passing along:

If Congress passes a law which exceeds the powers granted to it, the States–now that the doctrine of nullification is dead–do not raise the question of constitutionality, and contend with the national government, but the law goes quietly into the statute-book, and any person who feels aggrieved by it brings it before the courts, as he would the by-law of a railroad company the validity of which he wanted to test.

1 A. Lawrence Lowell, Essays on Government 104 (1890).

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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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