By Cash Michaels

Special to the NNPA News Service from

The Wilmington Journal

 The recent landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision upholding the constitutionality of President Barack Obama’s historic health care reform act may ultimately be used undermine the underpinning of major civil rights legislation, a prominent law professor says.

Attorney Irving Joyner, a professor at North Carolina Central University School of Law in Durham, has joined other legal analysts across the nation in hailing the high court’s 5-4 decision on June 28 in favor of the Affordable Care Act. But he said there are larger ramifications that could come from the tiebreaking opinion of conservative Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr. that the individual mandate, the requirement citizens who can afford health insurance must purchase it, amounts to a tax, not a penalty.

This view merely endorsed one of three constitutional justifications which the Obama administration presented to the Supreme Court in its briefs and oral arguments,” Joyner said. “This view is supported by the law which says that when a person does not purchase health insurance, the Internal Revenue Service and the individual factors related to this ‘penalty’ legally qualified it as a tax. The opinion said that the use of tax incentives to promote citizens to engage in conduct was not new and cited tax incentives to buy cars, homes or to obtain a college education, etc.”

Even while upholding the constitutionality of the law,  Joyner explained, Roberts agreed with his conservative colleagues, who wrote in their dissenting opinions that Congress did not have the constitutional power to enforce compliance with the individual mandate through the Commerce Clause, because that would be forcing American citizens to make purchases (in this health insurance) by federal mandate.

By a five to four vote, the court decided against this application of the constitution,” Joyner observed. “In doing so, the court significantly limited the authority of Congress to rely upon the Commerce Clause to support federal law.”

The Commerce Clause is found in Article 1, Section 8, of the U.S. Constitution. It gives Congress the power “to regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes.”

An analysis by professors at the Cornell University Law School notes: “The Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed segregation and prohibited discrimination against African-Americans, was passed under the Commerce Clause in order to allow the federal government to charge non-state actors with Equal Protection violations, which it had been unable to do up to that point because of the Fourteenth Amendment’s limited application to state actors. The Supreme Court found that Congress had the authority to regulate a business that served mostly interstate travelers in Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States. 379 U.S. 241 (1964).

It also ruled that the federal civil rights legislation could be used to regulate a restaurant, Ollie’s Barbeque, a family-owned restaurant in Birmingham, Ala. because, although most of Ollie’s customers were local, the restaurant served food that had previously crossed state lines.

 So although the Commerce Clause has been used in the past to force states and businesses to stop discriminating on the basis of race, now it cannot be used to force citizens to purchase goods and services, according to Justice Roberts prevailing opinion last week.

This could represent the first step in removing some of the legal tools to protect the rights of African-Americans.

 “This limiting of the reach of the Commerce Clause, as described by Roberts and adopted by the conservatives on the court, can and will probably come up again when the constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act is reviewed by the Supreme Court in the next Supreme Court session beginning in October,” Joyner warns. “The limiting of the reach of the Commerce Clause can be used to serve as a restraint on Congress’ power to enact and continue laws pursuant to the 15th Amendment right to vote and the 14th Amendment Equal Protection Clause. The Voting Rights Act, a limited-timed  enactment, does not have a tax component to it.”

  And that can spell trouble. “While people can and should celebrate the court’s opinion as it relates to health care, we should be wary of the expected consequences of this decision as it will relate to other constitutional issues which the court will address in the near future,” Joyner stated. “Those other cases will probably have a more profound impact on the rights of African-Americans and racial minorities than does the health care legislation.”