Senseless South Carolina lawmakers approve bill that seeks to nullify Patient Protection Act

Fol­low­ing in the foot­steps of the Repub­li­can-con­trolled state House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives in Okla­homa, six­ty-five mem­bers of South Car­oli­na’s House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives vot­ed this week to approve a bill that attempts to nul­li­fy the land­mark Patient Pro­tec­tion Act with­in the bor­ders of the Pal­met­to State.

The bill, H. 3101, seeks to:

… ren­der null and void cer­tain uncon­sti­tu­tion­al laws enact­ed by the Con­gress of the Unit­ed States tak­ing con­trol over the health insur­ance indus­try and man­dat­ing that indi­vid­u­als pur­chase health insur­ance under threat of penal­ty; to pro­hib­it cer­tain indi­vid­u­als from enforc­ing or attempt­ing to enforce such uncon­sti­tu­tion­al laws; and to estab­lish crim­i­nal penal­ties and civ­il lia­bil­i­ty for vio­lat­ing this article.

The prime spon­sor of the bill is Repub­li­can Bill Chum­ley. Chum­ley is either not aware that by attempt­ing to nul­li­fy fed­er­al law, he is vio­lat­ing the oath of office he swore or affirmed when he became a law­mak­er, or he is aware and sim­ply does­n’t care.

The Supreme Court of the Unit­ed States has repeat­ed­ly held that fed­er­al law trumps state law and states have no author­i­ty to nul­li­fy fed­er­al laws. In Coop­er v. Aaron (1958) the Court unequiv­o­cal­ly affirmed that the fed­er­al judi­cia­ry alone has the pow­er to inter­pret fed­er­al laws and decide their con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty. For state offi­cials to assume such pow­er would be a vio­la­tion of their oaths:

No state leg­is­la­tor or exec­u­tive or judi­cial offi­cer can war against the Con­sti­tu­tion with­out vio­lat­ing his under­tak­ing to sup­port it. Chief Jus­tice Mar­shall spoke for a unan­i­mous Court in say­ing that: ‘If the leg­is­la­tures of the sev­er­al states may, at will, annul the judg­ments of the courts of the Unit­ed States, and destroy the rights acquired under those judg­ments, the Con­sti­tu­tion itself becomes a solemn mockery.

A Gov­er­nor who asserts a pow­er to nul­li­fy a fed­er­al court order is sim­i­lar­ly restrained. If he had such pow­er, said Chief Jus­tice Hugh­es, in 1932, also for a unan­i­mous Court, ‘it is man­i­fest that the fiat of a state Gov­er­nor, and not the Con­sti­tu­tion of the Unit­ed States, would be the supreme law of the land; that the restric­tions of the Fed­er­al Con­sti­tu­tion upon the exer­cise of state pow­er would be but impo­tent phrases’.

The Supreme Court has found the Patient Pro­tec­tion Act to be con­sti­tu­tion­al. This deci­sion is bind­ing on South Car­oli­na and its elect­ed offi­cials, includ­ing Bill Chum­ley and his col­leagues — whether they like it or not. Thus, iron­i­cal­ly, H. 3101 — which attempts to make the Patient Pro­tec­tion Act unen­force­able — is itself unenforceable.

Chum­ley is free to dis­like and dis­agree with the Supreme Court’s deci­sion in Nation­al Fed­er­a­tion of Inde­pen­dent Busi­ness v. Sebe­lius.

But as an elect­ed leader who swore an oath to defend the Con­sti­tu­tion of the Unit­ed States, he must respect the Court’s inter­pre­ta­tion of the Constitution.

Sim­i­lar­ly, those of us who fer­vent­ly dis­agree with the Supreme Court’s Cor­po­ra­tions Unit­ed rul­ing have to respect that deci­sion, even though we may not like it. We are, of course, at lib­er­ty to pro­pose and dis­cuss chang­ing the U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion to over­turn the deci­sion, and that is what the Move to Amend effort is all about.