Short Story Fiction Contest May 2014 | Page 143

but viewed another way, the people who don’t go out on dates are forcing other people not to be able to see them. And when those young invincibles eventually decide that they want to date people, they will further weaken the quality of the dating pool by siphoning off the most attractive people who selflessly entered the dating pool. The only way you can ensure that the dating pool remains strong is to get those young invincible attractives into the pool as soon as possible. Hence the partnership mandate.”

While Patter had a reasonable case to make on the economics, the constitutionality of the partnership mandate was hotly contested. Within a year of passage of the Act, the case had run through a few different federal circuit courts of appeal and obtained different judgments. Some courts held that Congress had no constitutional authority to force individuals to enter into relationships. Others held that Congress had power to levy the fine for individuals who didn’t fulfill the mandate under its taxing power.

Charles Friedman, a constitutional scholar from Harvard, maintains that the case was an easy call from the beginning. “Any reasonable person would concede that Congress has the authority to force people to pay taxes. If Congress wants to raise taxes through a fine on single people, there is no particular reason they can’t do that.”

But what of the argument that the original meaning of the taxing power meant raising money for revenue purposes, not for regulatory ends like forcing people to date?

“Rubbish,” Friedman scoffs. “That would be absurdly limiting. There is no one true ‘meaning’ of the taxing power. It means what the country needs it to mean. A court striking down an important law on the basis of the naive idea that words have a fixed meaning would be the height of irresponsibility.”