Last August, Judge Royce Lamberth, a Reagan-appointed trial judge in DC, suspended all federal funding for embryonic stem cell (ESC) research — a decision which limits such research in a way that even President George W. Bush found untenable. Today, a divided D.C. Circuit panel reversed Lamberth’s decision:

Two scientists brought this suit to enjoin the National Institutes of Health from funding research using human embryonic stem cells (ESCs) pursuant to the NIH’s 2009 Guidelines. The district court granted their motion for a preliminary injunction, concluding they were likely to succeed in showing the Guidelines violated the Dickey-Wicker Amendment, an appropriations rider that bars federal funding for research in which a human embryo is destroyed. We conclude the plaintiffs are unlikely to prevail because Dickey-Wicker is ambiguous and the NIH seems reasonably to have concluded that, although Dickey-Wicker bars funding for the destructive act of deriving an ESC from an embryo, it does not prohibit funding a research project in which an ESC will be used.

To translate this a little, Lamberth held that all federally-funded ESC funding violates the Dickey-Wicker Amendment, which prohibits the use of federal funds for “research in which a human embryo or embryos are destroyed.” Even though no federal money goes to studies that actually destroy an embryo, Lamberth concluded that such research requires scientists to build upon previous research that involved the destruction of an embryo, and that this is not allowed.

Lamberth’s decision, however, cannot be squared with Supreme Court precedent. Under the Supreme Court’s decision in Chevron v. NRDC, judges are normally supposed to defer to an agency’s reading of a federal law unless the agency’s interpretation is entirely implausible, and the Obama administration quite plausibly read the Dickey-Wicker Amendment to only prohibit federal funding of the actual destruction of an embryo — not federal funding of subsequent ESC research. Accordingly, the court of appeals reversed.

Today’s decision is a very hopeful sign that Lamberth’s questionable understanding of this law will no longer undermine stem cell research. Both of the judges who joined today’s majority opinion are conservative Republican appointees. Judge Douglas Ginsburg is a hardcore tenther who once called for a return to an Depression-era vision of the Constitution that struck down child labor laws and other very basic legal protections. Judge Thomas Griffith was appointed by George W. Bush.

Their decision did leave open a slight possibility that Lamberth could try to suspend stem cell research once again. The appeals court expressly decided not to weigh on two alternative claims by the plaintiffs, including a claim that federal ESC funding is illegal “research in which a human embryo or embryos are . . . knowingly subjected to risk of injury or death,” because these claims were not first considered by the court below. Nevertheless, the appeals court made clear that “the plaintiffs have not identified, nor have we found, any precedent for upholding a preliminary injunction based upon a legal theory not embraced by the district court.”

So it appears very likely, if not entirely certain, that stem cell research will ultimately be upheld against all challenges.

For almost two years now, ThinkProgress and the Wonk Room have tracked tentherism, the widespread conservative belief that pretty much everything the federal government does is unconstitutional. Hardcore tenthers believe, among other things, that because the Constitution does not mention education, federal education programs such as Pell Grants, federal student loans and grants for low-income students are all forbidden. At a town hall meeting earlier this week, Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-TX) laid out a kind of “tentherism-lite.” Under Farenthold’s misguided view of the Constitution, Congress is still allowed to spend money on education, but they can’t make sure that the money is being spent wisely:

My broad general principle is that if you read the Constitution of the United States, it doesn’t talk about education, which to me means our founding fathers intended to leave it to the states. . . . In a perfect world, I would turn [all federal education funding] back to the states with some block grants.

Needless to say, Farenthold’s creative theory of the Constitution bears little resemblance to the actual text of the document. Article I of the Constitution provides that “[t]he Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States.” Broadly speaking, this empowers Congress in two ways. Congress may spend directly to benefit the general welfare, as it does with programs like Medicare or Social Security, but it can also offer grants to the states which require the state to accept certain conditions if they take the money. Thus, for example, Congress requires states that accept federal Medicaid funding to actually spend that money on health care for the poor, and if a state doesn’t want to comply with this condition they can turn down the funds.

The same rule applies to federal education funds. Texas has the right to turn down federal education funding, but it does not have the right to simply take free money and thumb its nose at any conditions that come with it. Farenthold, however, seems to believe that Texas can have its cake and eat it too — that national leaders are allowed to fund education, they just can’t have any control over this funding.

On it’s surface, this may appear to be a more moderate position that full-bore tentherism, but it would undoubtedly lead to the end of all federal/state partnerships such as federal education grants or even Medicaid. If Congress isn’t allowed to place any conditions on the money that it gives the states, then it isn’t even allowed to tell Texas that it has to spend federal Medicaid grants on health care for poor people and not on hats for Gov. Rick Perry’s wife.

It’s worth noting that Farenthold’s position is so radical that it was even rejected by Judge Roger Vinson, the Tea Party judge who released an opinion striking down the Affordable Care Act with at least 40 separate factual and legal errors, and who has continuously defied the Constitution and binding Supreme Court precedent in order to do the Tea Party’s bidding.