The Affordable Care Act does not simply expand access to and participation in the private health insurance market, it also expands access to Medicaid — guaranteeing that all people who earn below 133 percent of the poverty rate can receive Medicaid. This expansion is unusually generous to the states. Although each of the fifty states runs its own Medicaid program, the federal government will pick up 90 percent of the new costs generated by expanding the program to millions more Americans. Nevertheless, the Supreme Court just agreed to consider a strange challenge to this expansion some time next year.

Despite the fact that this expansion will allow each and every state to provide millions more people with affordable health care, and despite the fact that it will do so at minimal cost to those states, the several conservative-led states challenging the Affordable Care Act claim that the Medicaid expansion is unconstitutional because it somehow “coerces” the states into participating in Medicaid. As ThinkProgress explained more than a year ago when this argument was originally raised, it essentially boils down to a claim that Medicaid is unconstitutional because it is too generous, and it has little chance of succeeding in court:

Congress has broad authority to entice states into action by offering them a federal grant which provides the state with money, but only if the state agrees to comply with certain conditions. The state is always free to turn down this grant, but if it takes the money, it has to comply with its agreement to also obey the conditions.

Medicaid is the largest existing conditional grant program, and [the plaintiffs] essentially argue that, even though they have decided to take the money that Medicaid offers, they can refuse to comply with the conditions on that money because Medicaid is such a good deal than they couldn’t possibly refuse it.

This novel claim is based in a statement in the Supreme Court’s decision in South Dakota v. Dole that “in some circumstances the financial inducement offered by Congress might be so coercive as to pass the point at which ‘pressure turns into compulsion.’” The justices, however, have literally never held that a conditional grant is “so coercive” as to be unconstitutional, and the lower courts universally reject the claim that Medicaid is unconstitutional just because it is a good deal for the states

Nothing has changed since we originally published those words. Indeed, every single judge to consider the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion has upheld it. Even Tea Party Judge Roger Vinson, the judge whose error-laden opinion tried to wipe out the entire Affordable Care Act, rejected the plaintiffs’ argument against the Medicaid expansion.

It is mildly troubling that the Supreme Court would agree to hear this issue in the first place, since federal/state partnerships like Medicaid are one of the backbones of America’s safety net. If the Supreme Court were to undermine Congress’ ability to give conditional grants to the states, everything from Medicaid to federal assistance to public schools could fall by the wayside.

Yet there are two reasons to doubt that the Supreme Court is poised to do so. The first is simply the nature of the plaintiffs in this case. It is very rare for this many states to join together on one lawsuit — even if the only real link between those states is the fact that they are currently run by Republicans — and the Supreme Court likely agreed to hear this issue simply out of deference to the extraordinary nature of these plaintiffs.

The second reason is that it is not at all clear how lashing out at federal/state partnerships fosters any real interest in preserving states rights. If the Supreme Court rolls back Congress’ power to provide conditional grants, nothing would prevent Congress from simply cutting the states out of the bargain entirely and assuming total control over programs like Medicaid. The likely outcome of a decision rolling back the ACA’s Medicaid expansion would be to increase the role of the federal government because it would no longer be possible for Congress to trust states to administer major safety net programs.

It is unfortunate that the justices chose to waste their time with a fringe issue that no judge has found to have merit. Nevertheless, there is no reason to doubt that the Affordable Care Act will be upheld.

The most powerful line in conservative Judge Laurence Silberman’s decision upholding the Affordable Care Act is his simple recognition that the law’s opponents “cannot find real support for their proposed rule in either the text of the Constitution or Supreme Court precedent.” Today, the Supreme Court agreed to follow in Silberman’s footsteps — considering whether the judiciary can appropriately strike down a landmark health care law despite the fact that there is nothing in the Constitution allowing them to do so.

There can be no question that Silberman is right about what the Constitution has to say about this law. The plaintiffs’ primary challenge is to the provision requiring most Americans to either carry health insurance or pay slightly more income taxes (there are other issues in this case, which will be discussed in a subsequent post). In their vision of the Constitution, this provision runs afoul of some unwritten rule against being told what to do. The federal government can regulate how people go about the business they are already engaged in, under this vision, but it is utterly powerless to push people to engage in commerce they would prefer to avoid.

There are many, many problems with this theory of the Constitution, but Silberman’s rebuttal of it is both the most simple and the most elegant. The Constitution says nothing suggesting that people can immunize themselves from the law by remaining passive, it simply provides that the United States may “regulate commerce…among the several states.”

Modern judges do not need to speculate what the founding generation understood these words to mean when they were written into the text of the Constitution. Chief Justice John Marshall — himself one of the ratifiers of the Constitution — told us what they mean in the 1824 case of Gibbons v. Ogden. Marshall wrote that there is “no sort of trade” that the words “regulate Commerce” does not apply to. He said that the power to “regulate” something “implies in its nature full power over the thing to be regulated.” And he told us that Congress’ power to regulate commerce “among the several states” applies to all trade that “concern[] more states than one.”

So when Congress passes a nationwide law regulating the entire national health care market, there is simply no question that the law is constitutional. The law regulates a form of trade — trade for health services — and it regulates a health services market that is both pervasive and nationwide. The Affordable Care Act cases are some of the easiest cases to cross the Supreme Court’s bench in a generation, and it is nothing less than shocking that even a handful of judges have struck the law down.

Indeed it is far worse than shocking — it is downright dangerous. Judges are not like members of Congress. They are unelected and they serve for life. As such, they cannot be checked by fear of a lost election and can only be checked by their loyalty to our written Constitution. If the federal judiciary has the power to ignore the text of the Constitution to strike down laws that they do not like, then there is literally nothing that they cannot do. If the Supreme Court defies our written Constitution just once, there is nothing preventing them from doing so over and over again. Indeed, if the justices strike down the Affordable Care Act, there is nothing preventing them from forcing every American to eat broccoli.