CAC President Doug Kendall: “Through our Constitution, the founders created a national government capable of solving national problems. The father of our country would be appalled by the uninformed attacks on the constitutionality of health care reform.”

Washington, DC – The Constitution’s original meaning supports the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. That is the powerful message delivered in a brief filed by Constitutional Accountability Center yesterday in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, supporting the federal government in its appeal of a lower court ruling striking down the Act. CAC’s brief draws on compelling recent scholarship by preeminent scholars – including Yale Law School Professors Akhil Amar and Jack Balkin – as well as a treasure trove of documents collected by the University of Virginia as part of the George Washington Papers collection, providing fresh insight into the views of George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, and other founders on the scope of federal powers under the Constitution they helped write.

CAC President Doug Kendall said, “Through our Constitution, the founders created a national government capable of solving national problems. The father of our country would be appalled by the uninformed attacks on the constitutionality of health care reform.”

CAC Chief Counsel Elizabeth Wydra added, “A faithful reading of the Constitution’s text and history shows that the Affordable Care Act’s minimum coverage provision is plainly constitutional under the Commerce Clause and the Necessary and Proper Clause. The government’s appeal should not be judged by the Constitution according to the Tea Party, but by our actual Constitution—as explained by George Washington, our first President, Alexander Hamilton, co-author of the Federalist Papers, and John Marshall, a member of the Virginia ratifying convention and Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, among others.”

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Resources:

Brief amicus curiae by CAC defending the Affordable Care Act on originalist grounds: http://theusconstitution.org/cases/briefs/virginia-ex-rel-cuccinelli-v-sebelius/4th-circuit-amicus-brief-virginia-ex-rel

The Papers of George Washington: http://gwpapers.virginia.edu/

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Constitutional Accountability Center (www.theusconstitution.org) is a think tank, public interest law firm, and action center dedicated to fulfilling the progressive promise of the Constitution’s text and history.