Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Obamacare Class Action

A suit on behalf of a Tennessee citizen named Anthony Shreeve has been filed challenging the constitutionality of Obamacare. This is the first suit brought by a private citizen against Obamacare. It joins several other constitutional challenges to that law.

Unlike other suits, this one challenges the constitutionality of the entire law and not merely individual parts. The suit is being handled by Tennessee attorney Van Irion who is also not coincidentally running for US Congress in the third district of Tennessee. The most interesting aspect of this suit is that it will challenge nearly a century of Supreme Court precedent on the Commerce clause.

A. This case has unique causes of action, as outlined above, that directly challenge the erroneous "Commerce Clause" and "General Welfare Clause" precedents of the Supreme Court. The interpretation of past courts have essentially rendered moot any limitations on the Federal government established in the Constitution.

The Commerce clause argument and the 10th Amendment argument were intended to be complimentary, just like those two parts of the Constitution are complimentary. They are opposite sides of the same coin. The argument is also about Canons of Legal Interpretation: Any interpretation of a single clause that negates the overall purpose of a law, contract, or other document, must be wrong. Such a clause can be included to create exceptions to an overall rule, but in those cases, the clause must be very clear about its limitations in reference to the overall purpose of the document. The scope of such exceptions must be clear and the courts must interpret them as narrowly as possible. The actions of Congress over the past 70 years have become the illustration that the "Commerce Clause" and the "General Welfare Clause" were misinterpreted as many years ago.

One other unique aspect of this suit is that it allows citizens to become part of the suit by lending their name behind the plaintiff. Last night, before Mr. Irion appeared on On the Record, there were almost eleven thousand names and that has grown to almost sixteen thousand and growing since.

This suit continues a trend of citizens challenging the Constitutionality of not only the Obama agenda but out of control D.C. policy in general. It is now referred to as Constitutional Conservatism.

2 comments:

  1. So this is like, what, Textualism for Dummies? I still don't see the point in this, Clarence Thomas is the only one on the record as supporting this magnitude of repudiation of the Commerce Clause doctrine.

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  2. At the least, he hopes to start a national debate about just how expansive the Commerce Clause should be. You snicker at any citizen action you disagree with and that's just pompous.

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