Life Legal Defense Foundation is disappointed at the Supreme Court’s decision in NFIB v. Sebelius, rejecting the opportunity to strike down the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare).
The good news is that none of the religious liberty issues related to anti-life provisions of the Act were decided in Thursday’s ruling. Those issues are yet to be decided, the hope remains that the draconian anti-life provisions of Obamacare will be ruled unconstitutional.
While the Court did not justify the Individual Mandate under the urged expansion of Congressional power pursuant to the Commerce Clause, and while the Court limited the expansion of Medicaid, it ultimately upheld the individual mandate in a strained analysis of the Congressional power to lay and collect taxes. The Court read the mandate not as an order to purchase insurance but as laying a tax on those who do not buy health care insurance. The Court viewed this as a valid exercise of the taxing power. In doing so, the court acknowledged that an estimated 4 million people a year will pay the penalty levied, aka the tax, rather than purchase insurance.