The aspect of the court’s decision on
“Obamacare” that forbids Congress (and the President) from threatening states
by withholding funds already promised is significant in terms of American
federalism. In his dissent, Scalia notes the Court had never before “found a
law enacted under the spending power to be coercive.” In the case then before
the Court, all but two justices found “the conditional of a State’s continued
receipt of all funds under a massive state-administered federal welfare program
upon its acceptance of an expansion of that program” to be just that, and thus
unconstitutional. The majority was doubtlessly acting to protect federalism
from even more encroachment by the U.S. Government at the expense of the
sovereignty retained at least de jure by
the state governments.
According to the precedent, while Congress
can specify the purpose to which funds can be used by states, other funds
already being received by the states cannot be held ransom. As a result, we can
expect greater differences between the states in terms of government programs,
including entitlement programs like Medicaid. Given the empire-scale of the
American Union of fifty republics, such diversity is both natural and healthy.
It is significant that in the case before the
Court, twenty-six states were objecting to the Affordable Care Act. That
the anticipated forced-expansion of Medicaid could have been onerous to the states
may thus have weighed more heavily on the justices than did the burden of the
mandate on individuals. By its
decision, the Court gave those states some relief in being able to “just say
no” to the expansion without having to lose existing Medicaid funds. In
recognizing the states’ authority in this respect vis a vis that of the
federal government, the justices evaded further political consolidation at the
expense of federalism (and the sovereignty retained at least formally by the
states).
Sources:
National Federation of Independent
Business et al. v. Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services, et al., 567 U.S.
Supreme Court (2012).
Amanda
Terkel, “GOP Governors Resist Implementing Obama’s Health Care Law DespiteSupreme Court Ruling,” The Huffington
Post, June 29, 2012.