We Need Better Rules on Standing

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Late last year, Texas federal district court judge Reed O’Connor ruled that Obamacare was unconstitutional. His reasoning was absurd: because the fine for not having insurance has been reduced to $0—for the time being—it means the individual mandate no longer exists. And since the whole law is based on that, the whole law is now unconstitutional.

Naturally, this has been appealed. But today, the 5th Circuit asked for briefs on whether anyone actually has standing to appeal:

This sort of thing happens too frequently, and the Supreme Court needs to say something about it. It wouldn’t have to overturn decades of jurisprudence about standing, it would just need to slightly liberalize the terms under which states and legislatures can say that they’re affected by a lower court ruling.

I mean, can you imagine what would happen if this were allowed to stand? It would bless the strategy of forum shopping to find a reliably anti-Democratic judge to invalidate Obamacare nationwide, and would then prevent any higher court from hearing an appeal. No democracy can support something like this.

In the end, even if standing were disallowed, I suppose some blue state somewhere would forum shop for its own judge, who would then hand down the opposite ruling. At that point, higher courts would have to take on the substance of the case whether they liked it or not. But it’s still no way to run a railroad.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

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