A law professor sees a parallel between the arguments against Obamacare and against child labor laws in the early 20th Century:
. . . then and now, challengers to the statutes had to propose that the
Supreme Court invent new constitutional rules in order to strike them
down. At the time it considered the issue in 1918, there was nothing in
the Supreme Court’s case law that suggested any limit on Congress’s
authority over what crossed state lines. On the contrary, the Court had
upheld bans on interstate transportation of lottery tickets,
contaminated food and drugs, prostitutes, and alcoholic beverages.
That’s why the Supreme Court’s invalidation of the law in 1918 astounded even those who had most strenuously opposed enactment. Hammer v. Dagenhart
declared—in tones reminiscent of the Broccoli Objection to
Obamacare—that if it upheld the law “all freedom of commerce will be at
an end, and the power of the States over local matters may be
eliminated, and, thus, our system of government be practically
destroyed.” Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, dissenting, wondered how it
could make sense for congressional regulation to be “permissible as
against strong drink but not as against the product of ruined lives.”
The Court responded that unlike all the contraband that it had permitted
Congress to block, the products of child labor “are of themselves
harmless.” This meant a completely novel constitutional doctrine: The
Court took unto itself the power to decide which harms Congress was
permitted to consider when it regulated commerce.
- Wikipedia: Hammer v. Dagenhart
