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Comment by mmcwilliams | Hacker News Reader

In this case it would be the fact that the order is unconstitutional.

The Constitution doesn't say anything about denominations, metals, and so on. That's under Title 31 of the U.S. code, section 5111-5112, "Minting and issuing coins, medals, and numismatic items", which grants the Secretary of the Treasury control over how much to mint, and in the case of denominations, it says the Secretary "may" (not "must") mint them. The Secretary can simply decide to not mint any.

The change itself is ok. The issue is who can make the change, and that would be congress not the president.

Title 31 says the Secretary of the Treasure can. The Secretary cannot permanently cancel the penny, but they can stop making them.

That's mentioned in the article as a "might". Let's see in practice.

How is it unconstitutional?

The "coinage clause" of the Constitution.

https://constitution.findlaw.com/article1/annotation37.html

> Article I, Section 8, Clause 5 is known as the coinage clause. It gives Congress the exclusive power to coin money. The Supreme Court has also interpreted clause 5 as giving Congress the sole authority to regulate every aspect of United States currency.

That supreme court interpretation is from 1820 so it's both "settled law" and "an outdated ruling", depending on who you ask.

Doesnt that make the fed unconstitutional as well?

No, but only because it was officially created by act of Congress: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Reserve_Act

This doesn't eliminate the penny, just pausing production of it. If he had unilaterally declared the penny no longer valuable then that would be unconstitional and require an act of congress

The distinction you make is irrelevant since both are under Congress' responsibility. The president has no constitutional authority to determine which currency is minted and how much of it is minted.

Secretary of Treasury works for President.

https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?path=/prelim@title31/sub...

This law does not mandate continuous minting. So I think you are wrong that the Secretary of Treasury does not have the ability to say how much of a coin is produced day to day.

Legal scholars, such as Laurence H. Tribe, have noted that U.S. law grants the Treasury Secretary the authority to determine the quantities of coinage necessary to meet the needs of the United States. Therefore, if the Secretary decides that the required amount for a particular coin is zero, they are within their legal rights to stop its production.

Congress does not mint coins, and this order does not coin new currency. They are separate concerns.

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