Another appellate court ruled that the Affordable Care Act is constitutional. And once again, a conservative judge wrote the majority opinion. Judge Laurence Silberman is decidedly conservative in his reasoning. He agrees that the ACA’s insurance mandate is a novel exercise of Congress’s Commerce Clause powers, but novelty doesn’t imply unconstitutionality. He defers to Congress in its choice of policy tools to address an issue of national concern.
These appellate rulings should give pause to anyone–myself included–attempting to make educated guesses about how the Supreme Court will ultimately rule on the law. Judicial thought may be influenced by political leanings, but those leanings aren’t determinative. The final ruling may not be the 5-4 affair many Court watchers expect.
