Federal district court judge Roger Vinson issued his ruling today on summary judgment motions in the Florida case, State of Florida v. United States Department of Health and Human Services, in which 26 states allege that Obamacare is unconstitutional. Judge Vinson agreed with their arguments and granted summary judgment in favor of plaintiffs.
Judge Vinson's ruling evens the score at 2-2; two federal courts have upheld the act against constitutional challenges, while two have now found it to be invalid. The ultimate decision will be made, of course, by the Supreme Court, some time in the next few years.
Judge Vinson held that the Commerce Clause cannot be stretched so far as to require individual Americans to buy health insurance approved by the government. This conclusion may not seem surprising to those who simply read the clause--It gives Congress the power "To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes"--but beginning in the 1930s, broad interpretations of the clause have greatly expanded federal powers. Still, Judge Vinson was certainly correct in saying that "Never before has Congress required that everyone buy a product from a private company (essentially for life) just for being alive and residing in the United States."
Florida Ruling Requires Government to Stop Implementing Obamacare - Ilya Shapiro
As I continue digesting Judge Vinson’s ruling, I notice two key things beyond the facts that the “individual mandate is unconstitutional”:
1. In performing his severability analysis — determining which parts of the overall legislation survive — the judge threw out all of Obamacare.
2. In discussing whether to issue an injunction – a judicial command to do or refrain from doing something — the judge determined that his declaratory judgment in this context was the same as an injunction. That is, a federal court saying that a piece of legislation is unconstitutional is effectively the same as a decision mandating the government to act.
A judicial drubbing for Obamacare - Washington Examiner Editorial
In a rigorously reasoned decision that seemed to delight in turning the government's arguments on their head, U.S. District Court Judge Roger Vinson on Monday struck down as unconstitutional President Obama's signature legislative achievement, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare. In the suit brought by 26 states, Vinson found that "Congress exceeded the bounds of its authority" by including the individual mandate and held the entire act unconstitutional "because the individual mandate is unconstitutional and not severable" from the rest of the law. Vinson, who was appointed by President Reagan to the U.S. District Court in the Northern District of Florida in Pensacola, even tweaked Obama, pointing out in a concluding footnote that the president whose name is forever linked to the measure had backed a health care reform bill without an individual mandate when he was in the Senate. Vinson quoted then-Senator Obama as saying in 2008 that "if a mandate was the solution, we can try that to solve homelessness by mandating everybody buy a house."
Vinson said the government even conceded that its interpretation of the Commerce Clause to support the individual mandate "breaks new legal ground" and is "unprecedented." He concluded, "If it has the power to compel an otherwise passive individual into a commercial transaction with a third party ... it is not hyperbolizing to suggest that Congress could do almost anything it wanted. It is difficult to imagine that a nation which began, at least in part, as the result of opposition to a British mandate giving the East India Company a monopoly and imposing a nominal tax on all tea sold in America would have set out to create a government with the power to force people to buy tea in the first place."
A moratorium needed for Obamacare until its constitutionality is decided - Tom Fitton
President Obama's signature legislative "achievement" plunged deeper into legal limbo Monday with a decision by a Florida federal judge ruling the entire law unconstitutional. This follows the Dec. 13 Virginia court invalidation of the central component of the president's health care reform law requiring individuals to buy health insurance.
Both decisions hinged upon the constitutionality of the individual mandate. This individual mandate "exceeds the boundaries of congressional power" and would "invite unbridled federal police powers," U.S. District Judge Henry E. Hudson wrote in his 42-page December opinion.
How important is this mandate to Obama's health care reform law, or Obamacare, as it is widely known?
"Without an individual responsibility provision (or mandate), controlling costs and ending discrimination against people with preexisting conditions doesn't work," wrote Attorney General Eric Holder and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius in an editorial published in the Washington Post the day after Judge Hudson's decision.
All Your Thoughts Are Belong To U.S. - William A. Jacobson
That seems to be the import of the ruling by federal Judge Gladys Kessler in upholding the Obamacare mandate in a suit brought by a group of private plaintiffs in Mead v. Holder (pg. 45, emphasis mine):As previous Commerce Clause cases have all involved physical activity, as opposed to mental activity, i.e. decision-making, there is little judicial guidance on whether the latter falls within Congress’s power....However, this Court finds the distinction, which Plaintiffs rely on heavily, to be of little significance. It is pure semantics to argue that an individual who makes a choice to forgo health insurance is not “acting,” especially given the serious economic and health-related consequences to every individual of that choice. Making a choice is an affirmative action, whether one decides to do something or not do something. They are two sides of the same coin. To pretend otherwise is to ignore reality.Our thoughts are now actions. There literally is nothing the federal government cannot regulate provided there is even a hypothetical connection to the economy, even if the connection at most is in the future.
