Obama Administration's Faulty View of Federal Power

"As the world awaits the Supreme Court's ruling on ObamaCare," writes Ilya Shapiro, "there's a larger story that the pundits are missing: the court's rejection of the Obama administration's increasingly extreme claims on behalf of unlimited federal power. ... When the administration can't get even a single one of the liberal justices to agree with it in these unrelated areas of the law, that's a sign there's something wrong with its constitutional vision."

He cites 3 cases in which the high court unanimously rejected government's claims this year:

• Religious Liberty - The court rule 9-0 that "punishing a church for failing to retain an unwanted teacher 'interferes with the internal governance of the church, depriving the church of control over the selection of those who will personify its beliefs.' Such interference, it concluded, violates the First Amendment's Free Exercise and Establishment Clauses."
• Criminal Procedure - The court ruled unanimously against the government's claim it had the "power to attach a GPS device to a suspected drug dealer's car and electronically monitor his movements, all without a warrant."
• Property Rights - The court unanimously rejected government's claim that it had the power to deny property owners the right "to judicial review of an EPA order to stop building a house it claimed was in violation of the Clean Water Act."

Obamacare and other high-profile cases await rulings this year.

Later in March, the administration claimed in the ObamaCare case that the government could require people to buy something as a means of regulating a broader national market. And a month later in Arizona v. United States, the government said that a federal policy decision regarding immigration enforcement priorities could by itself trump state law—a position that seemed to trouble even Justice Sonia Sotomayor, one of the president's own nominees.

More recently, the Justice Department has been suing states over voter-ID laws. Attorney General Eric Holder makes speeches claiming these laws herald the return of Jim Crow. Never mind that the Supreme Court has found them to satisfy the Voting Rights Act and the Constitution, most recently by 6-3 in Crawford v. Marion County Election Board (2008), where plaintiffs claimed that needing a photo-ID placed an undue burden on their right to vote.

"If the government loses in the health-care or immigration cases," concludes Shapiro, "it won't be because its lawyers had a bad day in court or because the justices ruled based on their political preferences. It will be because the Obama administration continues to make legal arguments that don't pass the smell test."