More Than 100 Law Professors Issue Statement Defending Constitutionality of Health Care Law
ACS distributed a statement today signed by more than 100 leading legal scholars, most of whom are part of the ACS network, reaffirming the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act and calling attention to the dangers of "throwing out nearly two centuries of settled law."
ACS also held a press call with the Center for American Progress about the statement, featuring ACS Executive Director Caroline Fredrickson, UCLA law professor Adam Winkler and University of North Carolina law professor William Marshall.
"I’ve never seen such an outpouring of support among law professors before," Winkler said during the call. "Legal experts nationwide are worried about the bald-faced judicial activism of the [recent federal district court decision] in Virginia."
Marshall, a former ACS Board Member, emphasized the devastating impact that a decision striking down the health care law could have on the nation’s regulatory system.
"We’re talking about the regulation of a $2 trillion industry in this country," he said. "The argument that the federal government cannot regulate what is one of the most important aspects of interstate commerce in this country is considerable and could be devastating not just to health care but other kinds of government regulation as well."
Fredrickson added: "The arguments that are being made in the challenges really go to a much broader set of statutes that I think Americans take for granted, and if this were to prevail, I think we would see a radical change in the way that the nation is able to govern itself."
In the statement, the law professors make clear that "Congress’s power to regulate the national healthcare market is unambiguous." The professors cite recent opinions by Justice Antonin Scalia and Chief Justice John Roberts that reinforce the broad power contained in the Constitution’s Commerce Clause and "easily" encompass the health care law’s minimum coverage provision.
"Nothing in the Constitution’s text, history, or structure suggests that, in exercising its enumerated powers, Congress is barred from imposing reasonable duties on citizens on the theory that such requirements amount to regulating ‘inactivity,’ " the statement explains.
Read the statement here, and listen to the press call here.
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