Law Federal judge in Texas strikes down ObamaCare

What was the original supreme court case about? Whether the fine was a tax or forcing a person to buy a service? It just seems like there is some overlap here addressing the mandate and that previous case.
 
Great.

The government's power of taxation is meant to be used for funding government activity, not for punishing or controlling behavior. If it's the latter, then they can destroy the entire constitution by simply taxing people for behaviors they don't like. For example, putting in a sedition tax that charges people a trillion dollars for criticizing the government. If they don't pay, they go to jail for tax evasion.

Just another of many problems in this ethical disaster.
Ever heard of the bag tax?
 
Article I, Section 8, Clause 1.

You mean here?

Section. 7.
All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills.

Or here?

Section. 8.
The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
 
You mean here?

Or here?
"Article 1, Section 8, Clause 1. The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States; 1.'

With emphasis.
 
"Article 1, Section 8, Clause 1. The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States; 1.'

With emphasis.

People not getting put out of their homes in large numbers do to getting fucked on health care costs sounds like general welfare to me.
 
suddenly democrats aren't too fond of federal judges
 
So what exactly will Obummer’s legacy consist of now?

Hahaha, the only thing he will ever be know as is being the black guy in the white house
 
What was the original supreme court case about? Whether the fine was a tax or forcing a person to buy a service? It just seems like there is some overlap here addressing the mandate and that previous case.
https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/567/519/#tab-opinion-1970521

NATIONAL FEDERATION OF INDEPENDENT BUSINESS et al. v. SEBELIUS, SECRETARY OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES, et al.

certiorari to the united states court of appeals for the eleventh circuit

No. 11–393. Argued March 26, 27, 28, 2012—Decided June 28, 2012 [ 1 ]

In 2010, Congress enacted the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in order to increase the number of Americans covered by health insurance and decrease the cost of health care. One key provision is the individual mandate, which requires most Americans to maintain “minimum essential” health insurance coverage. 26 U. S. C. §5000A. For individuals who are not exempt, and who do not receive health insurance through an employer or government program, the means of satisfying the requirement is to purchase insurance from a private company. Beginning in 2014, those who do not comply with the mandate must make a “hared responsibility payment” to the Federal Government. §5000A(b)(1). The Act provides that this “penalty” will be paid to the Internal Revenue Service with an individual’s taxes, and “shall be assessed and collected in the same manner” as tax penalties. §§5000A(c), (g)(1).

Another key provision of the Act is the Medicaid expansion. The current Medicaid program offers federal funding to States to assist pregnant women, children, needy families, the blind, the elderly, and the disabled in obtaining medical care. 42 U. S. C. §1396d(a). The Affordable Care Act expands the scope of the Medicaid program and increases the number of individuals the States must cover. For example, the Act requires state programs to provide Medicaid coverage by 2014 to adults with incomes up to 133 percent of the federal poverty level, whereas many States now cover adults with children only if their income is considerably lower, and do not cover childless adults at all. §1396a(a)(10)(A)(i)(VIII). The Act increases federal funding to cover the States’ costs in expanding Medicaid coverage. §1396d(y)(1). But if a State does not comply with the Act’s new coverage requirements, it may lose not only the federal funding for those requirements, but all of its federal Medicaid funds. §1396c.

Twenty-six States, several individuals, and the National Federation of Independent Business brought suit in Federal District Court, challenging the constitutionality of the individual mandate and the Medicaid expansion. The Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit upheld the Medicaid expansion as a valid exercise of Congress’s spending power, but concluded that Congress lacked authority to enact the individual mandate. Finding the mandate severable from the Act’s other provisions, the Eleventh Circuit left the rest of the Act intact.

Held: The judgment is affirmed in part and reversed in part.

 
NATIONAL FEDERATION OF INDEPENDENT BUSINESS et al. v. SEBELIUS, SECRETARY OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES, et al.

certiorari to the united states court of appeals for the eleventh circuit

No. 11–393. Argued March 26, 27, 28, 2012—Decided June 28, 2012 [ 1 ]

In 2010, Congress enacted the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in order to increase the number of Americans covered by health insurance and decrease the cost of health care. One key provision is the individual mandate, which requires most Americans to maintain “minimum essential” health insurance coverage. 26 U. S. C. §5000A. For individuals who are not exempt, and who do not receive health insurance through an employer or government program, the means of satisfying the requirement is to purchase insurance from a private company. Beginning in 2014, those who do not comply with the mandate must make a “hared responsibility payment” to the Federal Government. §5000A(b)(1). The Act provides that this “penalty” will be paid to the Internal Revenue Service with an individual’s taxes, and “shall be assessed and collected in the same manner” as tax penalties. §§5000A(c), (g)(1).

Another key provision of the Act is the Medicaid expansion. The current Medicaid program offers federal funding to States to assist pregnant women, children, needy families, the blind, the elderly, and the disabled in obtaining medical care. 42 U. S. C. §1396d(a). The Affordable Care Act expands the scope of the Medicaid program and increases the number of individuals the States must cover. For example, the Act requires state programs to provide Medicaid coverage by 2014 to adults with incomes up to 133 percent of the federal poverty level, whereas many States now cover adults with children only if their income is considerably lower, and do not cover childless adults at all. §1396a(a)(10)(A)(i)(VIII). The Act increases federal funding to cover the States’ costs in expanding Medicaid coverage. §1396d(y)(1). But if a State does not comply with the Act’s new coverage requirements, it may lose not only the federal funding for those requirements, but all of its federal Medicaid funds. §1396c.

Twenty-six States, several individuals, and the National Federation of Independent Business brought suit in Federal District Court, challenging the constitutionality of the individual mandate and the Medicaid expansion. The Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit upheld the Medicaid expansion as a valid exercise of Congress’s spending power, but concluded that Congress lacked authority to enact the individual mandate. Finding the mandate severable from the Act’s other provisions, the Eleventh Circuit left the rest of the Act intact.

Held: The judgment is affirmed in part and reversed in part.

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/567/519/#tab-opinion-1970521

So why can a lower court rule against it again?
 
So why can a lower court rule against it again?
I'm not sure I understand the question. Are you asking about the procedural nature of how cases move through the court system or are you asking about the questions of law at issue that brought the case to the Supreme Court?
 
So why can a lower court rule against it again?
btw I have no idea why the text I copy/pasted in my previous post got all weird with the mark throughs

Let's try this:

Shortly after Congress passed the ACA, Florida and 12 other states brought actions in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Florida seeking a declaration that the ACA was unconstitutional on several grounds. These states were subsequently joined by 13 additional states, the National Federation of Independent businesses, and individual plaintiffs Kaj Ahburg and Mary Brown.

The plaintiffs argued that: (1) the individual mandate exceeded Congress' enumerated powers under the Commerce Clause; (2) the Medicaid expansions were unconstitutionally coercive; and (3) the employer mandate impermissibly interfered with state sovereignty.

The District Court first addressed whether the plaintiffs had standing to bring the lawsuit. It determined that Brown had standing to challenge the minimum coverage provision because she did not have health insurance and had to make financial arrangements to ensure compliance with the provision, which would go into effect in 2014. The court further determined that Idaho and Utah had standing because each state had enacted a statute purporting to exempt their residents from the minimum coverage provision.

The court also concluded that the Anti-Injunction Act did not bar the suit.

The District Court then addressed the constitutional questions. It ruled that the individual mandate provision was not a valid exercise of Congress' commerce or taxing powers. The court held the entire act invalid because the mandate could not be severed from any other provision. The court dismissed the states' challenge to the employer mandates and granted judgment to the federal government on the Medicaid expansions, finding insufficient support for the contention that the spending legislation was unconstitutionally coercive.

A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit affirmed 2-to-1 the District Court's holdings as to the Medicaid expansions and the individual mandate. But it also reversed the District Court, holding that the individual mandate could be severed without invalidating the remainder of the ACA.

Question
  1. Is the suit brought by respondents to challenge the minimum coverage provision of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act barred by the Anti-Injunction Act, 2 U.S.C. 7421(a)?
  2. Does Congress have power under Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, specifically under the Commerce Clause or the Taxing and Spending Clause, to require most Americans to purchase health insurance?
  3. Is the individual mandate severable from the ACA?
  4. Did Congress exceed its enumerated powers and violate principles of federalism when it pressured States into accepting conditions that Congress could not impose directly by threatening to withhold all federal funding under Medicaid, the single largest grant-in-aid program?
 
I'm not sure I understand the question. Are you asking about the procedural nature of how cases move through the court system or are you asking about the questions of law at issue that brought the case to the Supreme Court?

Im asking if the Texas case here is on the same premise as the ruling the Supreme Court made years ago.
 
People not getting put out of their homes in large numbers do to getting fucked on health care costs sounds like general welfare to me.
That's the argument that despots in government have tried repeatedly. Saying that it means the welfare of citizens instead of the proper functioning of the government. But that interpretation fails because it would destroy the Constitution.

As I said, if that's the case, then I can levy a "firearm tax" since people shoot themselves occasionally, charge a trillion dollars a day, and the second amendment is gone and a ton of Americans end up in prison for "tax evasion" without the proper hearing or due process.
 
That's the argument that despots in government have tried repeatedly. Saying that it means the welfare of citizens instead of the proper functioning of the government. But that interpretation fails because it would destroy the Constitution.

As I said, if that's the case, then I can levy a "firearm tax" since people shoot themselves occasionally, charge a trillion dollars a day, and the second amendment is gone and a ton of Americans end up in prison for "tax evasion" without any proper hearing or process.

If they can tax for medicare and tax for social security then they can tax to subsidize the ACA.
 
So what exactly will Obummer’s legacy consist of now?

Hahaha, the only thing he will ever be know as is being the black guy in the white house

How dare you, sir. This is a deserving Nobel peace prize winner.
tenor.gif
 
Im asking if the Texas case here is on the same premise as the ruling the Supreme Court made years ago.
From a quick scan of this Texas case it seems like the primary issue is whether the individual mandate can be severed from the ACA, a question at issue today given the fact that the 2017 tax bill eliminated the IM. Judge O'Connor here ruled that it can't, that without the IM the ACA is effectively rendered unconstitutional

Back in the original ACA case, the IM severability issue was also at play. The Federal District Court for the Northern District of Florida ruled that the IM was unconstitutional, and that it cannot be severed from the ACA thereby rendering the entire ACA unconstitutional. The Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit affirmed the unconstitutionality of the IM but held that it can be severed, leaving the rest of the ACA intact

By the time it got to the Supreme Court, neither party was supporting the 11ths holding that the IM can be severed. From Roberts' opinion in Sebelius:

We granted certiorari to review the judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit with respect to both the individual mandate and the Medicaid expansion. 565 U. S. ___ (2011). Because no party supports the Eleventh Circuit’s holding that the individual mandate can be completely severed from the remainder of the Affordable Care Act, we appointed an amicus curiae to defend that aspect of the judgment below.

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/567/519/#tab-opinion-1970522
 
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That's the argument that despots in government have tried repeatedly. Saying that it means the welfare of citizens instead of the proper functioning of the government. But that interpretation fails because it would destroy the Constitution.

As I said, if that's the case, then I can levy a "firearm tax" since people shoot themselves occasionally, charge a trillion dollars a day, and the second amendment is gone and a ton of Americans end up in prison for "tax evasion" without the proper hearing or due process.

You're conflating the issue. Neither side in the ACA debate argue against the plenary congressional power to tax. Congress can pass pretty much any tax they want, so long as it isn't a penalty for unlawful conduct. THAT is the issue, whether the individual mandate was a tax or a penalty for unlawful conduct. Scalia in his dissent didn't even try to argue that Congress doesn't have the power to tax, because they do, so Scalia's dissent was based on the argument that Congress didn't pass the IM as a tax and the SCOTUS doesn't have the constitutional authority to enact taxes by judicially rewriting legislation -- which is what Roberts effectively did when he decided that it was a tax and not a penalty. That's not Roberts' decision to make because tax power was given to the House specifically because the House is the body most accountable to the people.

Scalia's dissent tells you everything you need to know about the tax issue. Some excerpts that can shed some light on the tax/penalty issue far greater than I ever could:

Scalia said:
In a few cases, this Court has held that a “tax” imposed upon private conduct was so onerous as to be in effect a penalty. But we have never held—never—that a penalty imposed for violation of the law was so trivial as to be in effect a tax.
Scalia said:
Quite separately, the fact that Congress (in its own words) “imposed . . . a penalty,” 26 U. S. C. §5000A(b)(1), for failure to buy insurance is alone sufficient to render that failure unlawful. It is one of the canons of interpretation that a statute that penalizes an act makes it unlawful: “[W]here the statute inflicts a penalty for doing an act, although the act itself is not expressly prohibited, yet to do the act is unlawful, because it cannot be supposed that the Legislature intended that a penalty should be inflicted for a lawful act.” Powhatan Steamboat Co. v. Appomattox R. Co., 24 How. 247, 252 (1861).
Scalia said:
We never have classified as a tax an exaction imposed for violation of the law, and so too, we never have classified as a tax an exaction described in the legislation itself as a penalty.
Scalia said:
And the nail in the coffin is that the mandate and penalty are located in Title I of the Act, its operative core, rather than where a tax would be found—in Title IX, containing the Act’s “Revenue Provisions.” In sum, “the terms of [the] act rende[r] it unavoidable,” Parsons v. Bedford, 3 Pet. 433, 448 (1830), that Congress imposed a regulatory penalty, not a tax.
And this is the final overhand right that destroys Roberts' majority opinion:
Scalia said:
For all these reasons, to say that the Individual Mandate merely imposes a tax is not to interpret the statute but to rewrite it. Judicial tax writing is particularly troubling. Taxes have never been popular, see, e.g., Stamp Act of 1765, and in part for that reason, the Constitution requires tax increases to originate in the House of Representatives. See Art. I, §7, cl. 1. That is to say, they must originate in the legislative body most accountable to the people, where legislators must weigh the need for the tax against the terrible price they might pay at their next election, which is never more than two years off. The Federalist No. 58 “defend[ed] the decision to give the origination power to the House on the ground that the Chamber that is more accountable to the people should have the primary role in raising revenue.” United States v. Munoz-Flores, 495 U. S. 385, 395 (1990) . We have no doubt that Congress knew precisely what it was doing when it rejected an earlier version of this legislation that imposed a tax instead of a requirement-with-penalty. See Affordable Health Care for America Act, H. R. 3962, 111th Cong., 1st Sess., §501 (2009); America’s Healthy Future Act of 2009, S. 1796, 111th Cong., 1st Sess., §1301. Imposing a tax through judicial legislation inverts the constitutional scheme, and places the power to tax in the branch of government least accountable to the citizenry.
https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/567/519/#tab-opinion-1970524
 
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