There are many objections to the health care legislation being voted on today. Some (like claims that it provides for death panels) are unjustified alarmism and others (like privacy concerns and its cripplingly high price tag) are all too valid. However, the worst aspect of the legislation is rarely mentioned: the fact that the legal justification for the individual mandate is based on a premise that undermines the entire structure of constitutionally limited government and sets the nation on a slippery slope where the government need not respect Constitutional rights. All Americans, especially Muslims, should take notice of why the reasoning behind the individual mandate threatens religious liberty in particular.
When a journalist asked Nancy Pelosi what clause in the Constitution justifies a mandate that would force individuals to purchase health insurance whether they want it or not, her initial response was a contemptuous “Are you serious?” Later her office issued an official response claiming that the individual mandate is based on the commerce clause, that is, the clause granting the government the right to regulate interstate commerce. It is certainly true that the commerce clause has been used to justify all kinds of expansion of government authority, but this interpretation takes that expansion to a dangerous new level. This argument says that the government is justified in forcing an individual to buy insurance for no better reason than that it serves the purpose of regulation of interstate commerce. What if the person has a religious objection to medical insurance? The bill includes some religious exemptions, but to whom they would apply is left to the bureaucrats. In the Smith decision, the Supreme Court already ruled that a law of general applicability cannot be deemed to violate religious freedom unless such a violation was the purpose of the law. Judge Scalia defended the use of “historic designation” to prevent needed expansion of a church on these grounds: “The issue presented by Smith is, quite simply, whether the people, through their elected representatives, or rather this Court, shall control the outcome of those concrete cases. For example, shall it be the determination of this Court, or rather of the people, whether (as the dissent apparently believes) church construction will be exempt from zoning laws? The historical evidence put forward by the dissent does nothing to undermine the conclusion we reached in Smith: It shall be the people.”
Since the purpose of this law is the regulation of interstate commerce those Muslims who object to insurance policies because they deem them to be variations on gambling and tied to usury may be forced to buy medical insurance anyway because violation of his religious liberty was not the intent of the law. (For the record, I believe those Muslims are mistaken in their understanding of Islamic law but I don’t think that I have a right to impose my understanding of Islamic law upon them, and the government certainly does not.)
The principle that the federal government may force people to buy health care in the interest of interstate commerce has awesome implications. On that premise a Muslim could be forced to buy pork or alcohol in the interest of interstate commerce. We don’t want to end up like Germany where, hypothetically, one might lose unemployment benefits for refusing to accept a job in a brothel. If the new legislation passes as expected, we will have to pray that the Court will find the individual mandate an unconstitutional intrusion.
Imad-ad-Dean Ahmad, Ph.D.
Minaret of Freedom Institute
www.minaret.org
Leave a Reply