Western Europe has been at peace for the past 80 years. Unfortunately, EU leaders have not appreciated the benefits of peace and look to promoting war. The memories of World War II have faded, but the EU seems determined to create new bad memories.
For now, the number one thing we can to do make the federal debt less costly and more manageable is to just stop making it bigger.
Thomas A. Berry and Charles Brandt
Braidwood Management is a small business that offers a self-insured health plan to around 70 employees. But under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), Braidwood is forced to cover “preventive services” that are mandated by the US Preventive Services Task Force (the Task Force), no matter how onerous. Braidwood says this is unconstitutional.
The Task Force is a bureaucratic entity run by expert doctors who were originally appointed by an official ranking below the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS). HHS recently purported to change the rules so that Task Force members are now appointed by the HHS secretary. Either way, the ACA empowers the Task Force to issue rules that compel employers to cover various “preventive services” without patient “cost-sharing,” i.e., without copays. Once the Task Force makes a coverage “recommendation,” that determination is, for all practical purposes, binding on private insurers. While the HHS Secretary may delay the date of any such rule taking effect for up to one year, neither he nor the president may review or modify the Task Force’s mandates. What the Task Force says, goes.
Braidwood sued the government, challenging this scheme as unconstitutional. Among other things, Braidwood argued that the Task Force violates Article II’s Appointments Clause because its members are “principal officers” who have not been validly appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate. The district court largely agreed with Braidwood, and the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed. Now the case is at the Supreme Court.
Cato has filed an amicus brief asking the Supreme Court to affirm the Fifth Circuit. In our brief, we advance two main arguments for why the Task Force, in its current configuration, violates the Appointments Clause.
First, Task Force members are principal officers of the United States who must be appointed by the president with Senate consent. Under the Supreme Court’s decision in United States v. Arthrex (2021), an officer is “principal” (as opposed to inferior) when that officer is empowered to make final, unreviewable decisions binding on private citizens. Because Task Force recommendations are binding on private insurers and unreviewable by a higher-ranking executive officer answerable to the president, Task Force members are principal officers whose present mode of appointment by the HHS Secretary is unlawful.
Second, even if Task Force members are inferior officers, their appointment nonetheless violates the Appointments Clause. The Constitution only allows “inferior officers” to be exempted from Senate confirmation if Congress explicitly makes that choice “by Law.” But the scheme for appointing Task Force members is set out by administrative regulation, not by statute. That means Congress never decided to vest such appointment “by Law” in the HHS Secretary. And in the absence of such a congressional choice, even “inferior” officers must be confirmed by the Senate. The appointment of Task Force members thus violates the Appointments Clause, regardless of whether they are inferior or principal officers of the United States.
The Supreme Court should affirm the Fifth Circuit and declare that members of the Task Force must be nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate.
After a diverse teaching career that spanned pre-kindergarten through college at public and private schools, Anna Bernanke had some thoughts on what education could—and should—look like. Chance Academy in Washington, DC, is the hybrid microschool she created to bring her vision to life for children.
Anna grew up very poor with parents who were Holocaust survivors who viewed education as the only way to improve your life, particularly from an economic standpoint. Attending a liberal arts college near Boston expanded Anna’s idea of education. “I found that it was just also an intellectual improvement with so many different exposures to new ideas, new people,” she says.
She began teaching part-time at her children’s elementary school so she could have a flexible job that aligned with her kids’ schedule. She fell in love with teaching. When her own kids got older, she began teaching full-time.
Eventually, Anna became department chair at a charter school in Washington, DC. She loved connecting with the kids, but the problem was that administrators were very focused on test scores because charter schools could be closed if scores dropped. They supported her ideas at first, such as giving students three weeks in the summer to work on public policy and allowing them to do internships. But when the test scores didn’t look good, the administration started clamping down on everything.
Anna left the school and realized she needed to either leave the profession or start her own program. She decided to create her own. She began looking for spaces and planning what her program would look like. “I opened my doors in 2008 in Mount Rainier with a teeny group of people. I just had no idea if people were going to show up,” she says. “It was a little before the more homeschool-oriented interest that seems to have grown over the years. It was very, very different. It was a microschool. There was no such word at that time as microschool.”
To maximize her independence and have the flexibility to create her own curriculum and adjust it as needed for her students, Chance Academy functions as a homeschool support center rather than an official private school. Homeschooled students can come for core academics or supplemental classes. They offer classes four days a week—there are no classes on Fridays, but they sometimes do field trips then.
“My goal was to work with families who might not have the resources to do a lot more,” Anna explains. “Even families who want to homeschool, some parents have to work, and they don’t have the opportunity to stay home. Or they don’t have the education to do that, but they want something. So that’s our little niche—families that might not always be able to manage this kind of education, but they really are seeking it for their child and for their family.”
There are currently around 30 students attending Chance Academy. They are divided into multi-aged cohorts that are typically ages 8–11, 12–14, and 15 and up, although it can vary depending on maturity or other needs. They start each day with a check-in where, Anna says, “the students learn how to express how they’re feeling that day, maybe understand what their needs are, and let other people understand.” She says this is so they start the day “by showing that we care about the individual first before we start the academic.”
Every student has ELA every day using a curriculum that is discussion-based and helps the students analyze what they read. Math is also offered daily, and it is the most divided to allow small groups at similar skill levels. PE or health is also offered daily, while science and history are twice a week. “Every single day, there’s what we call study cafe. It’s a place for them to develop organizational skills and to work on their homework so that they don’t have to do that much homework at home. I’m not a huge proponent of homework anymore,” Anna emphasizes. “Parents are just stressed out. They’re really stressed out. So you give homework and the kid will say, ‘Well, we had to run 12 errands and then do grocery shopping, and I didn’t have time to do my homework.’” Study café gives them time and a place to get a jump start on their work while developing organizational skills that will help them in other areas down the road.
Every month, they focus on a different value with the students. “The month coming up, May, is integrity. So what we do is we start off the month with a sort of a whole program meeting in the afternoon about what is integrity and what does it mean. And then at the end of May or the beginning of June, we recognize people who’ve shown integrity,” Anna explains. “The students are going to lead it because they’ve been studying Confucius in their history class. So they’re going to prepare a series of Confucianism-type ideas to share with the whole program to talk about what integrity looks like and what it means.”
The small size and independent status of Chance Academy mean teachers and families have a lot of flexibility. “Many of the teachers have been public school educators—not all—and they have to unlearn the way they taught,” Anna notes. “One of the ways that we do that, particularly for the English language, arts, and math, we gave them carte blanche to look at what’s out there and say, ‘What works for you? What would you like to try?’”
For families, this flexibility includes choosing which classes and days to attend. Some homeschoolers might only come for science class since that can be harder to do at home. Some might come for two full days each week, while others attend all four days. Teachers use an online platform to post the work so parents know what the kids should work on when they’re at home. “The downside sometimes is that you miss important discussion that happens, and so then you have an assignment, and you feel like you don’t understand it. And it’s partly because you haven’t been present for the discussion,” Anna says. “But we do have students with different needs, and they come when they can come, and we do what we can.”
A few years ago, Anna met with people from VELA, an organization that supports innovative educators. “It was the first time ever that people told me that I was doing something good and that I wasn’t crazy,” she says. “It felt pretty good because mainstream doesn’t always honor innovative thinking, especially, you know, that looks really different from what they grew up with.” Connecting with VELA has put her in touch with similar educators in the DC-Maryland-Virginia area. She appreciates this new network, knowing there are others out there thinking differently and learning from each other.
In Nicholas Wolterstorff‘s Understanding Liberal Democracy, he assails a vastly influential school of thought in a way that libertarians will find useful.