President Obama’s spokesman reiterated that a Supreme Court ruling against Obamacare would be “unprecedented,” but then fumbled the Supreme Court history behind that claim.
“It would be unprecedented in the modern era of the Supreme Court, since the New Deal era, for the Supreme Court to overturn legislation passed by Congress designed to regulate and deal with a matter of national economic importance like our health care system,” White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said today. “It has under the Commerce Clause deferred to Congress’s authority in matters of national economic importance.” Carney also said that Obama does not regret making the comment.
But Carney’s history is incorrect. “Jay, that’s not true,” CBS’s Norah O’Donnell countered. “There are two instances in the past 80 years where the president — where the Supreme Court has overturned [laws passed on the basis of the Commerce Clause]: US vs Lopez and US vs Morrison.”
The Lopez case, decided in 1995, involved Congress’s authority to regulate schools under the Commerce Clause. The Supreme Court ruled against Congress.
Lopez influenced the even more recent Morrison ruling in 2000, when the Supreme Court overturned sections of the Violence Against Women Act , on the basis that Congress had overstepped its authority under the Commerce Clause.
Carney was not convinced by O’Donnell’s history. “What [Obama] made clear yesterday — and he was a law professor, and he understands constitutional law and constitutional precedent and the role of the Supreme Court — was a reference to the Supreme Court’s history and it’s rulings on matters under the Commerce Clause,” he said.
