National Health Law Program (NHeLP) and Southeast Regional Center of the Network for Public Health Law.
J Law Med Ethics. 2013 Mar;41 Suppl 1:77-9. doi: 10.1111/jlme.12045.
In the typical case, states are expected to act like independent sovereigns and reject federal funding conditions they do not like. In National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius (NFIB), however, the Supreme Court found that Congress unduly coerced states when it enacted the Affordable Care Act's Medicaid expansion provision. This article provides an overview to NFIB and discusses its implications. Focusing on Chief Justice Roberts' plurality opinion, the article explains that undue coercion may occur when the following four elements come together: (1) Congress enacts a new spending program; (2) Congress seeks to induce state participation in the new program by threatening to terminate all federal funding to an existing program; (3) the federal funding to the existing program is significant; and (4) the requirements of the new program are not related to the old program and, thus, could not have been anticipated by the state.
在典型情况下，各州应该像独立的主权国家一样行事，拒绝他们不喜欢的联邦资金条件。然而，在全国独立企业联合会诉塞贝留斯案（NFIB）中，最高法院认为，国会在颁布《平价医疗法案》的医疗补助扩大条款时，对各州进行了不当的强制。本文对 NFIB 进行了概述，并讨论了其影响。本文重点介绍了首席大法官罗伯茨的多数派意见，解释了当以下四个因素结合在一起时，可能会发生不当强制：（1）国会颁布了一个新的支出计划；（2）国会通过威胁终止对现有计划的所有联邦资金来诱使州参与新计划；（3）对现有计划的联邦资金数额巨大；以及（4）新计划的要求与旧计划无关，因此，州方不可能预料到。
