Another legal challenge to Obamacare involves Wickard v. Filburn and Liberty Legal Foundation

Preparing for Obamacare Ruling

As another June slips by we all wait for the Supreme Court’s ruling on Obamacare. While we all wait, Liberty Legal Foundation is also preparing. As you know, the Federal court in Texas suspended our Obamacare Class Action lawsuit until the Supreme Court’s June ruling. The Texas Court told us that we could continue our lawsuit against Obamacare if the Supreme Court left any part of Obamacare standing and if we have any legal arguments that are not addressed by the Supreme Court’s ruling.

If the Supreme Court overturns Wickard v. Filburn and returns the Federal government to its pre-1942 size, we will not pursue the OCA lawsuit any further. We will also celebrate for several months because this would be a miracle ruling, and a true restoration to our original system of government. Unfortunately the parties that reached the Supreme Court earlier this year did not argue that Wickard should be overturned. Their arguments against Obamacare were much more specific. We hope the Court agrees with them and strikes down all of Obamacare. However, it is unlikely that the Court’s ruling will be that comprehensive. 

Liberty Legal Foundation filed an amicus (friend of the court) brief with the Supreme Court showing all of the negative affects Wickard has had on our nation. Unfortunately one amicus brief may not be enough to get the attention of the Court.

I predict that the individual mandate will be struck down as beyond Congressional authority, but the Court will not go as far as to strike down Wickard. Because the Florida attorneys did not argue that Wickard should be overturned, the Court is unlikely to go that far. This will leave us with yet another compromise rule regarding Congressional authority. The new rule will be impossible to understand and impossible to enforce. The net result will be Congress doing whatever it likes, with no limits, because no court will know exactly how much authority Congress has.

When the Supreme Court gives us this newly-flawed rule on Congressional authority Liberty Legal Foundation will file a motion with the Texas Federal court to resume our OCA lawsuit. We will continue to argue that Congressional authority should be returned to its pre-Wickard scope and that the Federal government should be returned to its pre-“New Deal” size.

There is another possibility that the Supreme Court could strike down the individual mandate, without overturning Wickard, and rule that the rest of Obamacare cannot be left standing without the individual mandate. If this happens we will, again, celebrate. However, this would leave us with a flawed rule on Congressional authority and no Obamacare law to use as a means to attack Wickard in court. If this happens Liberty Legal Foundation will find another example of Congressional abuse of power we can use to re-establish proper Constitutional limits on Congressional authority with a Supreme Court ruling. Unfortunately Congressional abuses of power are common. This is why we must win this fight.

If you wake up on Independence Day to a new Federal government, limited by our Constitution as it was before the New Deal, then we will be celebrating our re-established Constitutional Republic with you. If, however, you wake up on Independence Day still wondering how America got its current unconstitutional Federal government, and wondering how we’re going to fix it, then Liberty Legal Foundation will still be here working to fix it.

For Liberty,

Van Irion, Founder

LIBERTY LEGAL FOUNDATION

Georgia Court Ignored Basic Rules of Interpretation

Liberty Legal Foundation:

By now many of you have probably heard that the Georgia court ruled that Obama is a natural born citizen. (Link to opinion) More importantly it ruled that any person born on U.S. soil is a natural born citizen. According to the Georgia court, a woman from any country can visit the U.S. for one day, give birth, take the baby back to any country to be raised under any culture, and that baby can return as an adult, live here for 14 years and run for President. The end result of this ruling is outrageous. It runs contrary to common sense as well as to established law.

So, what happened in Georgia? The court determined that a clear definition of natural born citizen from Supreme Court precedent was overturned by dicta in another Supreme Court case. Precedent is any statement by the court that is pivotal to reaching the court’s ruling. Dicta is the opposite of precedent. Dicta is a statement by the court about matters that are not pivotal to reaching its ruling. Dicta is persuasive, but it cannot overturn precedent.

In other words, the Georgia court violated a basic rule of legal interpretation by ruling as it did. But wait, there’s more! The Georgia court also violated rules of Constitutional interpretation that have been around since the earliest Supreme Court. Our first Chief Justice explained that no part of the Constitution should be interpreted in a way that leaves any other part of the Constitution without independent meaning. By ruling that anyone born on U.S. soil can run for President the Georgia court concluded that the 14th Amendment was intended to alter article II of the Constitution. Such an interpretation is 180 degrees in opposite to Chief Justice Marshall’s explanation of how to interpret the Constitution.

But WAIT, there’s more! In order to reach this conclusion the Georgia court ALSO had to disregard yet another part of the holding from the Minor v. Happersett Supreme Court ruling. Even if you ignore the rules of Constitutional construction and the rule that dicta can’t overturn precedent, even if you agree with the Georgia court that the definition of natural born citizen in the Minor decision was dicta, you still can’t reach the Georgia court’s ruling. You see, the Minor Court ALSO explicitly ruled that the 14th Amendment didn’t create any new privileges and immunities. So, if a person couldn’t run for President before the 14th Amendment, they couldn’t run for President after the 14th Amendment. This means that the Minor. Court explicitly ruled that the 14th amendment didn’t alter the definition of natural born citizen under article II of the Constitution. Yet the Georgia court ignored this Supreme Court ruling as well.

The Georgia court was aware of all of these arguments because these arguments were made at the January 26 hearing and they were included in our written brief after the hearing. Yet the Georgia court’s ruling only addresses one of these three arguments and poorly at that.

The one point of good news from this ruling is that we have FINALLY gotten a court to rule on the merits of our argument. This may seem like a hollow victory, but it isn’t. Before this everyone that has brought a challenge against Obama’s eligibility has been dismissed on procedural grounds. Nothing is more devastating to the rule of law than a judicial branch that refuses to do its job. Before this case we had courts across the country telling Americans that they had no right to enforce the Constitution. That was absurdity at its most extreme. Liberty Legal Foundation found a case that we believed would at least get a ruling on the merits. We hate the ruling we got, but at least we got a ruling. Now we can appeal that ruling. The appeals process now will focus on the definition of "natural born citizen" rather than procedure for the first time since the issue of Obama's eligibility was raise in 2008.

For all the reasons I’ve mentioned in this message, we will be appealing the Georgia Court’s ruling. We will continue to fight for Constitutional rule of law. Failing that we will continue to force Courts to show their true colors. If our judicial branch will not uphold the rule of law, that fact needs to be exposed to the harsh light of day for all the world to see.

In Liberty,

Dawn Irion
Co-Founder
LIBERTY LEGAL FOUNDATION

Georgia Judge Denies Obama’s Motion to Dismiss in Ballot Challenge

Starting the New Year off right!

[Obama] will have to stand trial and prove his eligibility for office. . .Now judge Malihi is sending a message: ‘nobody is above the law.’”

UPDATE:

Thank you god!!! I am ready to cry! After 3 years of battle for the first time a judge ruled that Obama’s motion to dismiss is denied. I can now depose Obama and everybody else envolved without any impediment.

Our crushing national debt comes primarily from costs associated with doing things that the Federal government shouldn’t be doing in the first place!

Liberty Legal Foundation:

The Debt Debate and Why our Obamacare Lawsuit is Critical

Wickard v. Filburn key to overturning Obamacare

From OBAMACARE CLASS ACTION

Despite all the doom and gloom in the news, 2010 marked a real beginning in America’s fight to take back its Constitution. Pelosi and Reid intended to expand Congressional power through Obamacare. But instead, Obamacare woke America up. For the first time in decades, average Americans are talking about the Constitution. Average Americans know what the “Commerce Clause” is and are actively advocating for a return to Constitutional limits on Congress. For the first time since the 40’s, the Supreme Court’s Wickard v. Filburn case is being discussed by people other than law school students. This is all very good news!

The Wickard v. Filburn case was one of the most important and tragic moments in American history. It changed the role of the Federal government in American life as dramatically as did the so-called Civil War. Yet until this year, most Americans had never even heard of Wickard v. Filburn. Since our Obamacare Class Action’s primary goal is to overturn Wickard, let me take this opportunity to review the facts of Wickard:

Roscoe Filburn was an Ohio farmer growing wheat to feed his chickens, livestock, and family during the great depression. In order to drive up wheat prices the U.S. government had imposed limits on farmers’ wheat production. Roscoe was growing more than the overlords in DC permitted. So, the Department of Agriculture ordered Roscoe to destroy his crops and pay a fine, even though he was producing the excess wheat for his own use and had no intention of selling it.

Rather than pay the fine and destroy food during a food shortage, Roscoe sued the Federal government arguing that the “Agriculture Adjustment Act of 1938” was beyond the Constitutional authority of Congress. Filburn argued that because the excess wheat was produced for his private consumption on his own farm, it never entered commerce at all, much less interstate commerce, and therefore was not subject to Federal regulation under the Commerce Clause.

The Federal District Court ruled in favor of Filburn. The government then appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States, which called District Court's holding against the Department of Agriculture a "manifest error." The court went on to uphold the Act under the Interstate Commerce Clause. The Supreme Court decided that, because Filburn's wheat growing activities reduced the amount of wheat he would buy for chicken feed on the open market, and because wheat was traded nationally, Filburn's production of more wheat than he was allotted was affecting interstate commerce, and could be regulated by the federal government.

Now, it must be understood that for the first 150 years after the ratification of the Constitution all three branches of government understood that Congressional authority under the Commerce Clause was very limited. It was well established that this clause was intended to allow Congress to prevent individual states from imposing unfair barriers to commerce between the states, such as tariffs and home-state favorable regulations.

As an example of how central this principal of limited Federal government was to our Republic, we need only consider President James Madison’s 1817 veto of a bill that would have provided Federal funds for construction of roads, canals, and navigable waterways. President Madison wrote a letter to Congress explaining that his reason for vetoing the bill was that Congress had no authority under the enumerated powers of the Constitution to spend public funds on such projects. Madison explained that for the Constitution to survive the Federal government must remain limited to the specific tasks that the States had granted it authority to perform. Think about that for a minute folks. In 1817 a President who had been personally involved in the ratification of the Constitution reminded Congress that the Federal government didn’t have the power to spend public funds on roads. How far we’ve fallen…

It should also be noted that when the Wickard v. Filburn case reached the Supreme Court the Department of Agriculture had asserted a defense that would have caused the case to be thrown out, but then the Department mysteriously waived its defense. You see, the fix was in. For several years before Wickard v. Filburn, the FDR packed Supreme Court had been deciding cases that dramatically increased Congressional authority. I suspect that the Department of Agriculture somehow knew that Wickard v. Filburn would go their way in the Supreme Court. The FDR administration certainly wanted a case that would sweep away any remaining remnants of the old Republic’s Constitutional limitations and empower Congress to do whatever it wanted. With a World War raging, and the outcome of that war uncertain, 1942 was the perfect time to centralize power in DC. Unfortunately this fundamental shift in power went unnoticed. The government of our Founding Fathers was swept away and our history classes never reported it in our government funded schools.

For six decades Congress regulated anything that moved and taxed anything that didn’t. For six decades the Supreme Court upheld Congress’ authority to regulate anything. Many lawsuits were brought challenging Congressional mandates, but all fell to the new logic of Wickard v. Filburn. Finally in 1995 a small ray of hope emerged. United States v. Lopez (1995) was the first decision to invalidate a federal statute on the grounds that it exceeded the power of Congress under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution. Unfortunately, the Lopez decision was very limited, and has not been expanded upon significantly.

But now, with Obamacare taking Federal authority to an all-time high, with Americans waking up to this problem, we once again have an opportunity to regain our Constitutional Republic by overturning Wickard v. Filburn. We do not want a decision that simply eliminates the individual mandate of Obamacare. We need the Supreme Court to recognize that Wickard v. Filburn left zero limitations on Federal authority. We need the Supreme Court to recognize that Obamacare is a milestone in Congressional abuse and that that abuse arose BECAUSE of Wickard v. Filburn.

This is what Liberty Legal Foundation is fighting to accomplish. This is what you support by being part of the Obamacare Class Action and when you donate to Liberty Legal Foundation. Please tell everyone you know the story of Roscoe Filburn. Tell them about President James Madison’s letter to Congress in 1817. Show them how we lost our Constitution in 1942, and how we can restore it through the OCA lawsuit.

2011 will be a great year, with your help, as we continue to defend the Constitution.

In Liberty,
Van Irion
President, Lead Counsel, Co-Founder
Liberty Legal Foundation