In an opinion written by conservative Judge Laurence Silberman, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit Court today upheld the individual mandate of the Affordable Care Act. In a carefully considered 2-1 opinion, the court rejected the argument that Congress lacks authority under the Commerce Clause to require Americans to purchase health insurance. Judge Silberman’s opinion points out just how extreme the right wing’s arguments against the law are. (The dissent was based on jurisdiction, rather than the merits of the case.)

The parties challenging the ACA argued that Congress’s authority under the Commerce Clause is limited to people who are actively engaged in an economic activity. Thus, they say, Congress cannot require people to purchase health insurance. Although the Right Wing presents this argument as a conservative return to the original intent of the Framers, Judge Silberman recognizes that it is anything but:

Nothing in the text of the Constitution or relevant case law supports this constricted vision of congressional authority under the Commerce Clause. As Judge Silberman writes:

The mandate, it should be recognized, is indeed somewhat novel, but so too, for all its elegance, is appellants’ argument.

People For the American Way Foundation Senior Fellow Jamie Raskin has written that “the conservative arguments assailing the individual mandate seem paper-thin from the standpoint of constitutional text, history, precedent and doctrine.” Or, as the DC Circuit stated today:

The right to be free from federal regulation is not absolute, and yields to the imperative that Congress be free to forge national solutions to national problems, no matter how local–or seemingly passive–their individual origins.

The constitutional attack against the Affordable Care Act is part of the Far Right’s larger efforts to peddle the idea that Americans are powerless to impose reasonable limits on large corporations and hold them accountable when they do wrong. They will not be happy with today’s dose of reality from Judge Silberman and the DC Circuit.