Talk:Florida v. Department of Health and Human Services

certified questions

I undid a change by George Orwell III that had the comment: "restore to version without original research peppered with weasel wordss". The changes concern the questions certified by the Supreme Court.

George Orwell III, these are the questions the Supreme Court certified and not my original research. Hence the citation to the Supreme Court's website with those very words. (I simply cut and pasted them.) You might consider them weasel words, but they are the Supreme Court's weasel words. If you have a problem with them, then perhaps you should write to the Court. --Nstrauss (talk) 05:25, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

No, what you have posted are the briefs as filed by the petioners. The Court's response is at the bottom not the top of the brief. You have given Florida's interpretation as to what the question(s) are is the same as what the Supreme Court believes folks will be arguing later this month. The subsequent schedule, documentation, etc., after Cert was granted all refer to the 3 questions to be argued over and over again simply as plausibility of Severibility, Constitutionality of the mandate and legitimacy under the Anti-Injunction Act [in the tax-code] (2 pro-Florida, 1 pro-HHS). Your way we have Florida's POV, nothing to indicate the Supreme Court accepted that verbatim (which they never do, they cite specific statutes in the law; see the bottom of the SCOTUS infobox for the specific articles, sections etc. being tested) and now there is nothing to indicate the third leg or Pro-HHS POV even exists. In fact, you are requesting the sister case be deleted though HHS is clearly the petitioner in that one.

Have at it. I don't think I will be in the minority on this one unless nobody else familiar with SCOTUS cases never comes along. -- George Orwell III (talk) 06:32, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

I may have misunderstood the docket and the questions that were actually certified. If that is the case then please fix the questions by quoting them in full and cite the appropriate source. Simply undoing my good faith edit was not an appropriate response. --Nstrauss (talk) 18:43, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

I think you believe Cert is short for "certified" - Its actually short for the latin term "[Writ of] Certiorari"; and I think that is where the disconnect between what the Court actually OK'd for review and what (or how) the petitioners framed their request for review began. The people asking for a review frequently put a spin on what the court should & should not consider but the court is aware of this pre-trial attempt to argue the case in a paragraph or two and always dictates what is and what is not up for discussion by citing the specific statute in the law under review (in this case Article I of the Constitution and Title 26 of the U.S.Code, Section 5000A. among others)

In order to properly frame the questions here, we'd need to include both parts of the law and that has been considered just as much "original research" as is copying the petitioners subjective brief framing of the laws to be reviewed in a question form. Both are technically wrong for en.WP and biased, original research etc., so the practice as been to follow the simple summaries used by the court/established experts in subsequent articles, filings, documents and so on (see ref 25 for an example of court generated documentation that avoids citing long laws or copying subjective questions and simply uses general terms for the areas of the law to be reviewed. The actual grant order is ref 20; not the notes at the bottom of the various briefs. My expierence tells me - if anything - that ref 20 is the "certified" document listing the "official questions" but there is no way that I know to cite something that formally proves that).

The prior summary of the 3 main questions was enough to explain what was going to be reviewed without getting into any of this. Please re-read that version in hopes you can see the light. And by By trying to delete the sister-case, we are throwing away 2 out of the 3 days of oral argument (& that just doesn't make any sense imho). EDIT: well after rereading all three granted Certs, I think the language is vague enough to get away with listing most if not all of them word for word, though I suspect the last one is easily objectionable to some folks. -- George Orwell III (talk) 21:43, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Sorry for taking a while to get back to you, I was busy with non-WP stuff. I think we are both semi-correct here. By my reading the three appeals (Supreme Court case nos. 11-393, 11-398, and 11-400) are actually all cross-appeals from the same lawsuit. They all come out of the same 11th Circuit opinion (648 F.3d 1235). The parties both petitioned for cert and the Court granted all three. Standard WP practice is to have one article for each lawsuit, not one article for each appeal. That way, an article can tell a story about how the trial court ruled, what happened on appeal, etc. The two articles need to be combined into one that explains that the parties cross-appealed and the Supreme Court accepted cert for all three, with separate questions. Then ALL questions for all three appeals should be quoted directly and cited. The questions have been summarized here. Agree? If you would like to do this, be my guest; otherwise I will get to it in a few days. --Nstrauss (talk) 21:45, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

No problems - I stopped getting worked up over Wikipedia awhile ago. I don't usually get involved with WP articles (I prefer Wikisource where its all about the source and not the encyclopedia shtick) until it becomes apparent that serious flaws could begin to exist. Basically, I don't have a problem with anything you said but I do want to point out some of the eventualities yet to materialize based on working with the U.S. Reporter, Statutes at Large, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, etc. over on WikiSource. . .

First, we can split, delete, cross-ref, create, etc. all we like - the fact is that as of the schedule updated ~10 days ago (not a blog from Nov. 2011), the Court will hear the case of the indivdual mandate and its Constitutionality three Tuesdays from next and that case is HHS v. Florida (not the other way around as the 11th Ct. heard it & have it here initially). It was the first appeal of 648 F.3d 1235 and Florida had no choice but to counter the possible reversal afterwards. This means that if the mandate is found Constitutional, it will go into U.S. reports as Dept. of HHS v. Florida in volume 565 (when finalized). "Nobody" will remember nor care about Judge Vinson or the 11th Cuircut rulings at that point except the academics. The SCOTUS infobox and related sections will most likely get trimmed and moved to the other article if expierence is any indicator here. Leaving the "third" case name out of any this, since its been superseded & combined, is appropriate for now as well.

Second, I'd like to point out that if the opinion does come back as Constitutional - all the other questions are instantly moot. At that point, the only way those other questions will be remotely raised or (hypotheticaly) answered is if there is a dissenting opinion or two to that majority opinion. On the other hand, if the mandate is upheld as unconstitutional, then the question of severability becomes paramount and thus so does Florida v. Dept. of HHS again. The point here is that until we have an opinion, keeping co-existing but unique articles only makes sense. The U.S. Reporter is litered with citations similar in naming as Alaska v. Dept. of Interior followed by Dept. of Interior v. Alaska just because of similar split decisions to increasingly complex questions all being delivered in the same session/volume.

Finally, Does this really matter right now? Three weeks from now, the usual wave of nimrods will appear in both articles and that is when I think it would/could be best to address structural issues like the ones we've raised. Right now, almost everything proposed seems to make sense but feels like we're just shuffling the deck chairs on the Titanic by making things too "specific". I think the article "clear enough" the way it stands, personally, for at least the next few weeks. -- George Orwell III (talk) 01:11, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Ok, I see that we're closer together than I once thought. I do think this is very important right now since oral argument is approaching and these appeals are going to get a lot of attention. The problem is that the current situation isn't clear at all. The way I got into this is that I happen to be going to D.C. at the end of March and I was thinking about going to oral argument at the Supreme Court. When I saw on the Court's calendar what was being argued I wanted to learn more, but... it was really confusing! As you can tell from our back-and-forth about the cert questions even people knowledgeable about the issues can be wrong (as we both were). There really should be one article that, while perhaps not going into the ins and outs of each case, explains that the three appeals all arose out of the same lawsuit and 11th circuit opinion and lists all of the cert questions. --Nstrauss (talk) 00:00, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

I don't believe anybody was technically wrong here - just limited by WP practices and policy. It just doesn't make sense to move too far one way or the other until after we get a final decision is all I want at this point (well that last question's wording is biased and bound to get whacked but other than that I can accept the current status). -- George Orwell III (talk) 01:26, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

comment on initial changes made

Tell me what you think of the changes I just made. They seem like a compromise to me - some added explanation, some clean-up, but no consolidation of the two existing articles. --Nstrauss (talk) 17:39, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

Now I'm not so sure that you've fully digested all three; the Petitons, the Briefs and the Court's Ruling for all three docket Nos. we've been mentioning so far.

First, the Anti-Injunction Act article on wikipedia is forebearer of the provisions found today in the tax-code ( 26 U.S.C. 7421(a) ) as legislated over the decades since. Technically, the WP article is not the same point being used to support/strike the individual-mandate provision even before the effective date enacts it into standing law (2014?). I de-linked the inline wikilink to that AIA article for that reason.Nevemind - found correct article related to AIA & tax-code. See Tax Anti-Injunction Act. Will fix-links as I find them.

Second, the AIA question was never accepted nor argued by any of the lower courts involved with the "three lawsuits" we've been talking about so far. This is the example where your consolidation of the previous circuit and federal court cases based in the "Florida" lawsuit means little when the case gets to the Supreme Court level. The government did not appeal to review this AIA question under Florida but did get it in with the two other Federal cases (Liberty University & Thomas Moore) where one said you can't test the individual mandate in the courts until its up and running (where folks are being penalized for not complying) and the other said AIA does not bar asking the question prior to the provision becoming effective. This was the reason I did not list/de-listed it under this article title - even though its been petitioned for and accepted at the Supreme Court level in addition to the Florida based questions. Again, it doesn't make sense to combine anything just yet in hopes of providing a single Florida based timeline from the lowest court ruling to the final Supreme Court opinion when external questions not originating from the Florida timeline might become key by June. I guess I can live with the AIA inclusion for now but I'm wondering if its not "better" to whittle the Supreme Court section here back down to just the known certainties and point to the PPACA section for details, questions, etc.?

Finally, while the Federalism question has improved re: bias/weight, I still prefer the line for it used in the PPACA article. Citing a case supporting the POV of only one side just doesn't feel right. Plus the wording is anything but nuetral imo. -- George Orwell III (talk) 00:54, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

The wording is neutral in that it accurately describes the questions that the Court says it will address. That is all we need to do. The wording is by no means what the parties would arrive at if they reached some sort of consensus, but that is not the point. The Court gets to decide what issues it will be deciding on and that's what we're reporting on. If you want to add a section analyzing the legal issues in greater detail then I think that would be a valuable addition - but re-framing the questions away from what the Court accepted would be objectively incorrect and misleading, even if the re-framing was from a neutral POV. --Nstrauss (talk) 04:24, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

The idea the court is going to decide "one way" or automatically invalidate South Dakota v. Dole is absurd. The reply brief by the Gov't re-states Question One the way I'd think the court wants/intends to address the question:

1. Whether the provision of the Act that expands eligibility for Medicaid to cover individuals with income up to 133% of the Federal poverty level ( 42 U.S.C.A. 1396a(a)(10)(A)(i)(VIII) ) is a valid exercise of Congress's power to set the terms on which it will appropriate Federal funds [to the States re: Medicaid reimbursements/payments].

The Florida version presents the Court with only an 'If ~ Then' singularity option for reaching a conclusion; otherwise their previous opinion is voided (which is even funnier when you read the State lost on the only point contested out of four raised in South Dakota v. Dole & the claim that all Medicaid funding could then somehow be withdrawn contradicts PPACA's provisions funding 90% of these new 'Medicaid eligibility expansion' costs even after 2020 for the States to boot).

Yes the Court's ruling cites Question One from the original petition but that doesn't always mean that was the premise that convinced them to accept a review nor what will be hashed out when heard during arguments. Its at best a toss-up for the experts on whether or not there is such a thing as "the coersion doctrine" being recognized by the courts either way in the first place. I just don't "see" the court allowing Florida to "box" them up by agreeing with the way the question was first phrased by them, even if only by principle, is all. -- George Orwell III (talk) 06:13, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

The Court is unlikely let itself be boxed into a corner by the questions presented, which are, as in most cases, strongly slanted toward the petitioners. I can't remember a time when the Court artificially limited itself to the petitioner's framing of the issues. In the end the opinions (and there will likely be a bunch of them) will frame the issues as the drafting justices see fit. Scalia and Breyer in particular like to re-frame the debate and turn it on its head. I agree, it seems unlikely that any of them will rest their decision on South Dakota v. Dole, but who knows. We can't say for certain what issues the justices will address when they make their decisions. The best course IMO is to take the Court at its word. Especially since, in the legal world, the word of the U.S. Supreme Court is basically the word of God. If they say the moon is made of cheese, then it is. --Nstrauss (talk) 06:52, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

I don't think a summary of the cert questions should be removed from this article. They belong here since they pertain to this case. IMO they don't belong in the PPACA article. The PPACA article should link to this one and provide a brief summary.--Nstrauss (talk) 04:24, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

Yeah - after some thought I think I'm seeing it your way now too. Forget I mentioned it. -- George Orwell III (talk) 06:13, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

Finally, good catch on the two different Anti-Injunction Acts. --Nstrauss (talk) 04:24, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

Got lucky. -- George Orwell III (talk) 06:13, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

Move?

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: not moved Docket 11-400 (given here in the info box) is Florida v. HHS, while related docket 11-398 is HHS v. Florida. -- JHunterJ (talk) 19:00, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

---

Florida v. Department of Health and Human Services → Department of Health and Human Services v. Florida –

• New case name in according to SCOTUS docket bender235 (talk) 20:19, 29 March 2012 (UTC)
• There's a separate docket for the "Florida v. HHS" case. --MZMcBride (talk) 20:35, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

constitutionality of individual mandate

In the public opinion section, I fixed a misconception regarding the individual mandate. When voters are asked about the penalty provision, i.e. the actual mandate as written, 70% say it's unconstitutional. That includes a majority of democrats.[1] — Preceding unsigned comment added by TVC 15 (talk • contribs)

timelieness

This article is badly in need of updating. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ypnypn (talk • contribs) 02:07, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

Hi. I removed the {{update}} tag from the article. Can you be more specific about what you feel is out of date? If you can describe your concerns here on the talk page, someone will surely be along to address them. That's much better than adding a very unsightly tag to the article. Alternately, you can edit the article to bring it up to your standards! --MZMcBride (talk) 02:40, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

Is this the article about the crazy SCOTUS decision that just happened? I can't tell. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) 14:27, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

This case and Department of Health and Human Services v. Florida were both merged (by the Court) with National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius. --MZMcBride (talk) 15:29, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

Merge

Due to the fact that this case was merged with NFIB v. Sebelius by the Supreme Court, and this case is not substantial enough on its own to justify a separate article, this article should be merged. Kari Hazzard (T | C) 21:14, 28 June 2012 (UTC)