The Most Important Part of Today's Health Care Ruling You Haven't Heard About
I think the bigger concern is for other cooperative federal spending programs. This is the first time the Supreme Court has ever invalidated a condition on federal spending on the grounds that it coerced the states. That's a big deal. That's a really big deal. The court has a couple times in the past suggested that there might possibly be a condition that's coercive. But it's never found something coercive until now.
The grounds on which they found this Medicaid expansion to be coercive are not entirely easy to figure out. But they are problematic for other federal spending laws, for other cooperative federal programs. I could foresee, and I do foresee, that there will be a number of challenges over the next months and years to a number of cooperative federal spending programs, like the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, particularly depending on what changes ultimately get made to No Child Left Behind and what kind of regulations get imposed on states for federal education funds. I think there could be challenges to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. There could be challenges to the civil rights statutes that impose conditions on the states that accept federal funds, like the Rehabilitation Act, which prohibits disabilities discrimination. So there are lots of possibilities that are opened up by this ruling to challenge well-entrenched cooperative federal spending programs. Those opportunities didn't exist before today because the court had never a condition on federal spending coercive to the states.
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/06/the-most-important-part-of-todays-health-care-ruling-you-havent-heard-about/259134/#
Would withholding highway funds if your state's drivers license isn't converted to a federal secure ID be unconstitutional?
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