{"id":11178,"date":"2011-09-08T17:14:29","date_gmt":"2011-09-08T21:14:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=11178"},"modified":"2011-09-08T17:25:00","modified_gmt":"2011-09-08T21:25:00","slug":"dont-read-too-much-into-todays-obamacare-ruling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/11178\/dont-read-too-much-into-todays-obamacare-ruling\/","title":{"rendered":"Don’t Read Too Much Into Today’s ObamaCare Ruling"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today, a three-judge panel of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled<\/a> against challenges of ObamaCare by Virginia and Liberty University.<\/p>\n

For several reasons, however, today’s ruling should be taken with a Jimmy Buffet-sized shaker of salt<\/a>.\u00a0 First, the ruling itself did not address the substantive merits or the primary Constitutional claim that ObamaCare exceeds the authority permitted by the interstate commerce clause.\u00a0 Instead, the judges ruled that neither Virginia nor Liberty possessed procedural “standing,”<\/a> the ability to demonstrate harm that has occurred or may imminently occur.\u00a0 That is very different than a ruling that ObamaCare itself passes Constitutional muster, and at any rate is subject to change down the road as ObamaCare’s provisions are more fully implemented.\u00a0 Second, two of the judges who ruled today were appointed by Barack Obama himself, and the other by Bill Clinton.\u00a0 In the Fourth Circuit as a whole, however, there is an even split<\/a> with seven judges appointed by Republican presidents and seven appointed by Democrats.\u00a0 So the ideological makeup at an en banc hearing will be very different.\u00a0 Third, the question of standing is not one within the unique expertise or authority of these three particular judges.\u00a0 Quite the contrary, standing is an issue within the authority of every court in every case, because it is a requisite to move forward with any lawsuit in the first instance.\u00a0 Accordingly, today’s particular ruling is at odds with not only the lower court’s standing determination, but that of the Eleventh Circuit<\/a> in its recent ruling overturning ObamaCare.\u00a0 Fourth, this particular panel’s decision wasn’t a surprise, as its line of questioning in May<\/a> focused on the issue of standing, rather than the merits of ObamaCare.<\/p>\n

In other words, the immediate overarching theme is that today’s ruling is not a game-changer, and certainly not a significant “W” for ObamaCare as it continues its inevitable course toward the United States Supreme Court.\u00a0 Whether through the Supreme Court or through the next Congress, ObamaCare will be defeated.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today, a three-judge panel of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against challenges of ObamaCare by Virginia and Liberty University. For several reasons, however, today’s ruling should be taken with a Jimmy Buffet-sized shaker of salt.\u00a0 First, the ruling itself did not address the substantive merits or the primary Constitutional claim that ObamaCare exceeds […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3020,12,24,35,704],"class_list":["post-11178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-fourth-circuit","tag-health-care","tag-obama","tag-obamacare","tag-virginia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11178"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11178\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11180,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11178\/revisions\/11180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}