Schrödinger’s Cat and Obamacare

[Cpt Banjo]

In the recent 5th Circuit decision involving the Afforable Care Act, State of Texas et al. v. United States et al., Judge Jennifer Walker Elrod addressed the dissenting opinion's discussion of the effect of Congress' lowering the individual mandate "tax" to zero in its 2017 tax bill with the following analogy to quantum physics:

Finally, we would be remiss if we did not engage with the dissenting opinion’s contention that § 5000A is not an exercise of legislative power. This would likely come as a shock to the legislature that drafted it, the president who signed it, and the voters who celebrated or lamented it. It is not surprising that the dissenting opinion can cite no case in which a federal court deems a duly enacted statute not an exercise of legislative power, much less a statute that clearly commands that an individual “shall” do something.38

38 The dissenting opinion’s theory of the “law that does nothing” results in some bizarre metaphysical conclusions. The ACA was signed into law in 2010. No one questions that when it was signed, § 5000A was an exercise of legislative power. Yet today, the dissenting opinion asserts, § 5000A is not an exercise of legislative power. So did Congress exercise legislative power in 2010, as seen from 2015? As seen from 2018? Does § 5000A ontologically re-emerge should a future Congress restore the shared responsibility payment? Perhaps, like Schrödinger’s cat, § 5000A exists in both states simultaneously. The dissenting opinion does not say. Our approach requires no such quantum musings.

http://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pu ... 11-CV0.pdf

Schrödinger’s famous thought experiment can be summed up in this piece of verse: http://holyjoe.org/poetry/adams.htm