The Case Against ObamaCare's Individual Mandate

The Obama administration was clearly hoping that the lawsuits against this year's health care overhaul would be short-lived and legally fruitless. In both Virginia and Florida, where the strongest challenges have been mounted, the government filed to have the case dismissed due to lack of standing. And in both cases, the judges decided not only to let the challenges proceed, they also highlighted the unique, unprecedented nature of the key point of challenge—the law's individual mandate to purchase health insurance. According to Judge Roger Vinson, who is presiding over the Florida case, the "power that the individual mandate seeks to harness is simply without prior precedent." Neither judge has issued an actual decision on the merits as of yet, but as George Mason University School of Law's Ilya Somin points out in The Richmond Times-Dispatch, "it is increasingly clear that the plaintiffs have a serious case with a real chance of victory."

One hopes. Somin's short summary of a decision by a judge in Michigan to uphold the mandate suggests what's at stake:

In his decision in the Michigan case, Judge Steeh argued that the mandate is constitutional under the Commerce Clause because deciding not to purchase health insurance is an "economic decision."

"Economic decisions," he reasoned, include decisions not to engage in economic activity. This approach would allow the Commerce Clause to cover virtually any choice of any kind. Any decision to do anything is necessarily a decision not to use the same time and effort to engage in "economic activity."

If I choose to spend an hour sleeping, I necessarily choose not to spend that time working or buying products. Under Judge Steeh's logic, the Commerce Clause authorizes Congress to force workers to get up earlier in the morning so that they would spend more time on the job.

Somin's overview of the challenges so far is worth reading in full. 

More on the legal challenges against ObamaCare here, here, and here.