Five Ways to Restore the Separation of Powers

The Constitution separates power in two ways: among the three branches of the federal government and between the federal government and states. As James Madison wrote in the Federalist Papers, separation creates “a double security” for liberty because “different governments will control each other, at the same time that each will be controlled by itself.”

The Obama administration has spurned this core constitutional principle, aggrandizing executive power at the expense of Congress and states. It has rewritten laws, disregarding its constitutional duty to faithfully execute them.

ObamaCare’s implementation provides multiple examples: delaying statutory deadlines, extending tax credits to groups Congress never included, exempting unions from fees, expanding hardship waivers beyond recognition and granting “transition relief” for preferred employers. Read more »

Can Trump cut off funds for sanctuary cities? The Constitution says yes.

By David Rivkin and Elizabeth Price Foley

December 7, 2016, in the Los Angeles Times

Several cities and public universities have vowed to resist President-elect Donald Trump’s plan to deport undocumented criminals by doubling down on sanctuary policies. In response, Trump has pledged to curtail federal funding for sanctuary providers. Activists, predictably, are crying foul, and some legal scholars, such as Harvard’s Noah Feldman, have even claimed that such a response would be unconstitutional.  

But whatever one thinks about Trump’s strategy, it almost certainly would pass muster at the Supreme Court.Several cities and public universities have vowed to resist President-elect Donald Trump’s plan to deport undocumented criminals by doubling down on sanctuary policies. In response, Trump has pledged to curtail federal funding for sanctuary providers. Activists, predictably, are crying foul, and some legal scholars, such as Harvard’s Noah Feldman, have even claimed that such a response would be unconstitutional.  

Feldman and others point to New York v. United States (1992) and Printz v. United States (1997), in which the Supreme Court concluded that the federal government cannot conscript state or local officials to carry out federal law. The federal government must enforce its own laws, using federal personnel. So when state or local police arrest immigrants who are present in the country illegally, they are under no obligation to deport them, as deportation is the responsibility of the federal government alone. 

This “anti-commandeering” doctrine, however, doesn’t protect sanctuary cities or public universities — because it doesn’t apply when Congress merely requests information. For example, in Reno v. Condon (2000), the Court unanimously rejected an anti-commandeering challenge to the Driver’s Privacy Protection Act, which required states under certain circumstances to disclose some personal details about license holders. The court concluded that, because the DPPA requested information and “did not require state officials to assist in the enforcement of federal statutes,” it was consistent with the New York and Printz cases.

It follows that, consistent with the anti-commandeering doctrine, Congress can require state, local or university police to tell federal agents when they arrest an immigrant present in the country illegally. Read more »

A Win for Congress and a Setback for ObamaCare

A court rules that the House can sue the administration for its end-run on spending.

By DAVID B. RIVKIN JR. And ELIZABETH PRICE FOLEY

Sept. 10, 2015 7:46 p.m. ET

When the House of Representatives filed a lawsuit last year contesting President Obama’s implementation of ObamaCare, critics variously labeled it as “ridiculous,” “frivolous” and certain to be dismissed. Federal District Judge Rosemary Collyer apparently doesn’t agree. On Wednesday she ruled against the Obama administration, concluding that the House has standing to assert an injury to its institutional power, and that its lawsuit doesn’t involve—as the administration had asserted—a “political question” incapable of judicial resolution.

The House lawsuit involves two core allegations. First, the House contends that the executive branch has spent billions of dollars on ObamaCare’s “cost-sharing” subsidy, even though Congress hasn’t appropriated money for it. The House says the administration violated Article I, Section nine of the Constitution, which declares: “No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations Made by Law.”

Second, the House asserts that the administration has failed to faithfully execute ObamaCare’s employer mandate by issuing regulations lowering the percentage of employees who must be offered insurance and delaying the mandate’s effective date for two years. Read more »

The Supreme Court’s bad call on Affordable Care Act

By DAVID B. RIVKIN JR., ELIZABETH PRICE FOLEY, Los Angeles Times, June 29, 2015

In King vs. Burwell, the Supreme Court ruled that the Affordable Care Act permits individuals who purchase insurance on the federal exchange to receive taxpayer subsidies. Though the King decision pleases the ACA’s ardent supporters, it undermines the rule of law, particularly the Constitution’s separation of powers.

Under Section 1401 of the ACA, tax credits are provided to individuals who purchase qualifying health insurance in an “[e]xchange established by the State under Section 1311.” Section 1311 defines an exchange as a “governmental agency or nonprofit entity that is established by a State.”

As Justice Antonin Scalia’s dissent notes, one “would think the answer would be obvious” that pursuant to this clear language, subsidies are available only through state-established exchanges.

Yet the King majority ignored what the ACA actually says, in favor of what the Obama administration believes it ought to have said, effectively rewriting the language to read “exchange established by the State or federal government.”

Scalia observes that “Words no longer have meaning if an Exchange that is not established by a State is ‘established by the State.’” Like Humpty Dumpty in Lewis Carroll’s “Through the Looking Glass,” the majority claims that when the court is asked to interpret a word, “it means just what [the court chooses] it to mean — neither more nor less.”
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Bypassing separation of powers to “fix” sloppy laws

In King v. Burwell, the Supreme Court surprised many Court watchers, ruling six to three that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) permits individuals who buy health insurance on the federal exchange to receive taxpayer subsidies. The decision represents a decisive victory for ACA supporters, and an equally decisive loss for the rule of law. With King, the Supreme Court has signaled (again) that it is willing to “save” important laws by rewriting them, thus behaving as an all-powerful, unelected, politically insulated, unconstitutional Council of Revision.

King is the second time the Court has rescued the ACA. The first time, NFIB v. Sebelius (2012), involved a frontal assault on the constitutionality of the Act’s individual mandate and its mandatory Medicaid expansion. The five-Justice NFIB majority, led by Chief Justice John Roberts, saved the individual mandate by rewriting the word “penalty” to mean “tax,” and disregarding extensive legislative history indicating that Congress had intended to use its commerce power, not its taxing power.

The NFIB majority also ruled that the ACA’s mandatory Medicaid expansion violated federalism by unconstitutionally coercing states. Because the Medicaid expansion was integral to making the ACA “work,” this constitutional infirmity should have rendered the entire ACA unconstitutional pursuant to a severability analysis. But as with the individual mandate, the NFIB majority opted instead to save the ACA, transforming the Medicaid expansion from mandatory to “optional.” In the words of the four NFIB dissenters, the majority “save[d] a statute Congress did not write.”

To paraphrase Yogi Berra, King is déjà vu all over again. Once again, Chief Justice Roberts has penned a majority opinion rewriting the ACA, but with one important difference: This time, the Court’s rewrite does not even further the policy of “saving” the ACA. If the Court had ruled the other way, the ACA, while not performing well, would have remained largely intact, albeit in a less draconian form that was more respectful of states and individual liberty.
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Hillary’s Unlawful Plan to Overrule Voter-ID Laws

By DAVID B. RIVKIN JR. and ELIZABETH PRICE FOLEY
June 11, 2015 7:26 p.m. ET

Declaring that Republican-controlled states have “systematically and deliberately” tried to “disempower and disenfranchise” voters, Hillary Clinton has called for a sweeping expansion of federal involvement in elections. In a speech last week in Houston, laying out what promises to be a major campaign theme, Mrs. Clinton called for automatic voter registration at age 18, a 20-day early-voting period and a maximum 30-minute wait period to vote.

She has also endorsed the idea of a federal law permitting convicted felons to vote and allowing individuals, such as students, who reside in one state to vote in another. All of these federal mandates would augment and make more onerous an unconstitutional election-regulating federal statute known as the “Motor Voter” law enacted during her husband’s White House tenure.

A federal takeover of election laws—and rolling back state voter-ID laws intended to discourage election fraud—is a high priority for progressives. The billionaire financier George Soros reportedly has pledged $5 million to bankroll legal challenges to laws like those that Mrs. Clinton decries. Part of the effort is intended simply to galvanize the Democratic base by stoking a sense of grievance, but the strategy should be taken seriously—and rebutted as unconstitutional.

The Constitution gives Congress the power to regulate federal elections, not state ones. It also distinguishes between the regulation of presidential versus congressional elections. Specifically, under Article I, Section 4—the Elections Clause—while the states have primary responsibility for regulating congressional elections, Congress can pre-empt their rules by regulating “times, places and manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives,” except that Congress cannot regulate the “places of chusing [sic] Senators.”

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