The United States Supreme Court began a three-day process of oral arguments over whether an almost 150-year-old law should bar them from considering whether the government can require Americans to purchase health insurance on Monday.
The court opened its arguments with a debate over whether it has the authority to issue a ruling on the law, since its penalties for not carrying insurance have not come into effect yet.
Under the Anti-Injunction Act, a law passed in 1867, a tax cannot be challenged until someone actually has had to pay it. Health reform penalties do not start until 2015. The court-appointed attorney Robert Long argued the tax law blocks them from hearing the case.
“The Anti-Injunction Act imposes a pay first, litigate later rule that is central to Federal tax assessment and collection,” Long said in a transcript of the hearing released by the court. “The act applies to essentially every tax penalty in the Internal Revenue Code. There is no reason to think that Congress made a special exception for the penalty.”
However, justices on the court seemed doubtful the law would serve as a roadblock to deciding the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act.
Supreme Court Justice Ruth Ginsberg said the Anti-Injunction Act does not apply to penalties that are designed to induce compliance with the law rather than to raise revenue. She said the law would not raise revenue because no one would be willing to pay the penalty for it.
Chief Justice John Roberts agreed with Ginsberg and said it “seems to make no sense to separate the punishment from the requirement,” when referring to the penalties imposed by the law on Americans who refuse to purchase health insurance.
UW political science professor Donald Downs, a Badger Herald adviser, said he expects the court to rule it as a penalty and if that happens, the court will continue hearing the other arguments later in the week.
Downs added if the court were to rule the individual mandate a tax, then the case would be on hold until the tax comes into effect in 2015, though he said he doubted it would come to that.
Today the court is scheduled to hear arguments on the constitutionality of the individual mandate and another part of the act requiring states to expand their Medicare programs. The court will also hear arguments regarding a number of other aspects of the act Wednesday.
Rep. Tammy Baldwin, D-Madison, said she will defend the Affordable Care Act and its individual mandate, according to a statement released by her campaign.
“A mandate that brings everyone into the insurance pool helps spread the risk, thereby keeping costs down and ensuring that every individual has access to affordable, quality health care,” Baldwin’s said in a statement. “I oppose attempts to weaken or repeal the health care reform law.”
Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson also released a statement before court heard the oral arguments and said the country is suffering from “Stockholm Syndrome,” or being held hostage by “idiotic precedents that have robbed us of our freedom.”
Johnson is one of the 40 senators who requested a more detailed analysis of the costs of the Affordable Care Act last week from the Congressional Budget Office.