Healthcare, Vinegar and Congressional Power

Legal analysts are always reading the US Supreme Court’s arguments and opinions to determine what overall vectors are changing in the weather vane of judicial decisions. The Court has new members and a very big challenge that is inevitably going before that tribunal unless Congress is somehow able to repeal that law before the Court has an opportunity to rule: the constitutionality of the Obama administration’s healthcare statute. With lower appellate courts stuck in conflicting decisions, and various Republican state governors pressing for a ruling defeating or seriously curtailing the law, seers are looking at the cases currently before the Court to see how the balance is developing between the federal government’s vast powers under the Commerce clause (giving Congress the right to legislate in matters impacting interstate commerce) a nd the 10^th Amendment, which relegates powers to states powers not granted to the federal government. The issue is anything but clear, given the conservative leanings of the existing Court, the fact that a divided court is ruling is of particular relevance.

The seminal case just argued before the Justices is Bond vs. the United States, and with a little embellishment the facts might make an interesting plot on a television crime show. Carol Bond reacted badly when she learned that her husband was the father of her best friend’s son. Bring on Jerry Springer! As a microbiologist, Carol had skills and an understanding of toxic substances that she openly planned to use to make her very-ex-friend’s life “a living hell.” The plot she implemented? She coated “friend’s” car, mailbox, doorknob, etc. with a mildly toxic chemical that caused minor irritation, hardly the demonic attack underpinning her diabolic threat. She appeared to make her friend’s life “living heck.”

What makes this case relevant is the fact that she was prosecuted by the federal government – even though these events occurred within one state (Pennsylvania) – under a rather strange use of a law that was obviously created for very different purposes. The February 22^nd New York Times explains: “Such matters are usually handled by the local police and prosecutors. In Ms. Bond’s case, though, federal prosecutors charged her with using unconventional weapons in violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention of 1993, a treaty concerned with terrorists and rogue states.” Bond’s lawyers have argued that the use of this statute in a fairly garden variety local criminal matte r usurps states’ rights under the 10^th Amendment without solid constitutional basis.

With extremely an extreme harsh sentence in the offing, some of the Justices evidenced a negative reaction from the bench: “At the argument, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. suggested that Congress had gone too far. Suppose, he said, that Ms. Bond had ‘decided to retaliate against her former friend by pouring a bottle of vinegar in the friend’s goldfish bowl… ‘As I read this statute,’ Justice Alito said, ‘that would be a violation of this statute, potentially punishable by life imprisonment.’”

The appellate court, whose decision is at bar, ruled that only the states themselves could raise the 10^th Amendment argument, that individual defendants lacked the standing for that challenge. This position did not sit particularly well with one of the more liberal justices: “‘ [The] underlying premise,’ Justice [Anthony] Kennedy [stated], ‘is that the individual has no interest in whether or not the state has surrendered its powers to the federal government, and I just don’t think the Constitution was framed on that theory.’” Will this case be the guiding light is protecting the Court’s proclivities in the balance between states’ rights versus federal powers, or will it be a case that is decided simply on the particular facts at issue. The Court is very capable of side-stepping the Constitutional issue altogether and simply rule that this statute did not embrace this highly localized matter at all. Time will tell.

I’m Peter Dekom, and when two essentially conflicting philosophies of government at battling in the halls of Congress, the ultimate arbiter of that fight may often be the Supreme Court.