Yesterday, November 8, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia became the second federal court of appeals to uphold the constitutionality of the minimum coverage requirement of the Affordable Care Act.
To date, one federal appellate court has held the minimum coverage requirement to be unconstitutional (although severable from the remainder of the ACA), while five other appellate court decisions have held that the courts lacked jurisdiction to consider the challenge brought to them, either because the plaintiffs in the particular case had not been injured by the minimum coverage requirement or because a federal statute, the Anti-Injunction Act, denies jurisdiction.
This is a very important decision. Judge Laurence Silberman, who wrote the majority opinion upholding the statute, is a highly-respected conservative judge, appointed by President Reagan. Judge Harry T. Edwards, a Carter appointee, joined Judge Silberman in the majority. Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh, another well known conservative judge appointed by George W. Bush, dissented in an opinion that was much longer than the majority opinion, but on jurisdictional grounds rather than on the merits. Kavanaugh would have held, as the Fourth Circuit did in the Liberty University case, that the Anti-Injunction Act deprives the federal courts of jurisdiction. In the course of his lengthy opinion, Judge Kavanaugh suggests that there may be prudential as well as legal reasons why the courts may want to stay out of this fight, and suggests that if there is in fact a constitutional defect with the ACA (which he does not decide), it could be easily fixed by Congress.
This decision comes down two days before the Supreme Court will consider, and quite possibly decide, whether or not to take certiorari in one or more of four other appellate court cases that have been decided in ACA challenges. Although a grant of certiorari is almost certain at this point, the D.C. Circuit’s decision, as well as the earlier opinion of Judge Jeffrey Sutton, another prominent conservative who sided with the constitutionality of the ACA in a Sixth Circuit case, will certainly be noted by the Supreme Court justices. Moreover, the media narrative that seemed to explain the district court opinions—Republican appointees strike down the law while Democratic appointees uphold it—seems again not to work for appellate court judges. It may not work for predicting the Supreme Court vote either.
