Key Challenge to ObamaCare’s Constitutionality Advances
In Florida, a federal judge has ruled that a high-profile challenge to ObamaCare’s constitutionality — filed by the state of Florida, 20 others states, and the National Federation of Independent Business — will be allowed to proceed. The Obama administration had attempted to block the challenge, but District Court Judge Roger Vinson has ruled that the plaintiffs have standing, their claims have merit, and the case can advance.
Judge Vinson also ruled that the penalty associated with ObamaCare’s highly unpopular individual mandate — the mandate that citizens obtain federally approved health insurance — isn’t a tax. Thus, the judge wrote, “The defendants may not rely on Congress’s taxing authority under the General Welfare Clause to try and justify the penalty after-the-fact,” but rather must rely on “the Commerce Clause power.”
Replying to the Obama administration’s fallback request that the case be dismissed on the grounds that Congress clearly has the power under the Commerce Clause to issue the mandate (or so the administration claims), Judge Vinson wrote, “At this stage in the litigation, this is not even a close call”; there are clearly grounds to proceed. Vinson explained that “the Commerce Clause and Necessary and Proper Clause have never been applied in such a manner before.” He added, “The power that the individual mandate seeks to harness is simply without prior precedent.”
Thus, the Obama administration is now batting 1-for-3 in its efforts to get constitutional challenges to ObamaCare dismissed. In August, a federal judge ruled that a suit by the state of Virginia could proceed. Last week, a federal judge in Michigan ruled that another suit, by private parties, could not. In the Michigan case, the New York Times reports, “The judge wrote that the challenge … ‘arguably presents an issue of first impression,’ meaning it would be the first time the courts had considered it.” Yet the judge, somewhat inexplicably, saw no reason why the courts should consider it further.
Beyond the challenge to the individual mandate’s constitutionality, another part of the Florida case will go forward as well: the claim that ObamaCare “coerces and commandeers the states with respect to Medicaid.” Judging by the opinion, however, this claim seemingly advanced by the skin of its teeth and has far less chance of future success. In addition, four claims made by the plaintiffs were denied, including one rather disturbing one: that the individual mandate violates the Fifth Amendment guarantee that no one shall “be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” Whatever one thinks of ObamaCare’s substance (and few think less of it than I do), nothing about the fundamental process of law was violated by its passage (despite the exceptional level of unseemly deal-cutting involved) — and as Judge Vinson rightly noted, in quoting from Ferguson v. Skrupa (1963), judges have no business holding laws unconstitutional simply because “they believe the legislature has acted unwisely.”
In keeping with the typical wordiness of modern judicial pronouncements, the Florida opinion spans 65 pages. The Marshall Court (1801-35), led by the great chief justice and Revolutionary War veteran John Marshall, never issued a 65-page opinion in its entire 35-year run. Then again, the Marshall Court never had to confront a 2,700-page “law.”
By the time this ‘Act’ gets to the Supreme Court, the Court will be stacked by Obama’s radicals. It will be The Supreme Circus Act that will decide the constitutionality of ObamaCare.
Sadly, future generations will have to deal with the disastrous policies that have been flowing out of this Congress and this incompetent Regime.
Settle down Cybergeezer after the November election is over and the Republican Conservatives take over Congress and the U.S. Senate they will repeal this bill as well as impeach and kich out this historic black-white (mulatto) lousy president, and in doing so make real history by impeaching and throwing him out of office.
After all he should have never been even a candidate nor elected…where are all his records of accomplishment where is his real birth certificate, a Congressional Hearing could find out that he is not even eligible to be in his position!
If this happens to come to fruition then the only thing I am sorry about is the dog he got just so he could appear to be a real president!
To Steve DeMarcus: Thank you for demonstrating why no sane, smart person who’s genuinely concerned about this country is going to vote Republican this November.
TAKE YOUR MED’S!
He did. That’s actually reasonable for BC. He’s even worse when not on his meds.
Assume the lawyers in the Supreme Court uphold the individual mandate as written by the lawyers in congress. Gee, does that mean congress can now order a citizen to “get a job,” any job? Does this mean under that broadened commerce clause that being a hobo or vagrant, doing nothing productive, is no longer constitutionally protected once congress can order everyone to have a productive job? Does that mean Nevada or congress can now require citizens from other states to periodically purchase the services of a whore to keep the commerce in interstate porn humming and the prices low for poontang in Nevada? And if this individual mandate that allows congress to cancel uneconomic behavior has always been a constitutional power under the commerce clause, then why hasn’t congress and the courts historically gone along with outlawing “social parasites” and vagrants? Since this individual mandate is so popular with left wing democrats from the sixties, how come their seminal achievement was to cancel the military draft for which they never showed up for the single payer health care? Inquiring minds want to know.
Involuntary military service is bad, involuntary Obamacare is good, excellent point.
Involuntary servitude is a good point. During WW1 the Supreme Court, under the influence of the progressives and the Wilson White House, ruled that the national draft was not involuntary servitude. Congress was thus allowed to pre-empt the states, where the power to draft had been historically located. Indeed, states had criminalized “vagrants” and hobos, the homeless lifestyle, but the Supreme Court found that being treated as a criminal for the mere fact of being a vagrant unconstitutional. So if the individual mandate is upheld, you currently have the freedom to be a hobo–unless that is revisited by the courts–but not the freedom to be medically uninsured. Looks like involuntary servitude to me, admittedly to a nanny state congress. As I recall, the 19th century democrats had no problem with “slavery” and involuntary servitude. Obama and his father were never ancestral “victims” of the Yankee slave trade. In fact the Yankee slave traders stayed on the coast in their “factories” and bought slaves from the indigenous, traditional, black African slave traders, of which Obama’s ancestors could have been merchants of flesh. Ah the irony, the grandson of former slave traders and a democratic party historically OK with slavery bringing modern involuntary servitude to the masses. Love them lawyers.
Congratulations!!!
You’ve dialed in on one of the Democrat ‘talking points’.
Gibbs would like to have a beer with you.
Aren’t you impressed?
I’m still trying to understand how something is prohibited from being interstate commerce can be regulated as interstate commerce.
Welcome to ‘OBAMUNISM’!
I’m waiting for the Executive Order that requires all driving age Americans to buy the Volt.
This is a very good point. If the Federal Government can now force you to buy a product, like health insurance, why can’t it force you to only buy cars from the auto company it owns, GM? Think about it. The Federal Government could impose high taxes on all of the other auto companies so as to price them out of existance, forcing you to have only one option, buying from Government Motors. Then we really will have gone into a true Soviet-style government and Federalism will be dead.
And why should the Federal Government be in the business of giving you a financial incentive to buy any car, such as the Volt? How is this fair to all of the other auto companies? Do you get the same financial incentive if you buy a Nissan Leaf? And who will pay for the higher electrical bills if I buy one of these “plug-in” cars? The Federal government is quick to help you buy something you may not want, but it doesn’t really care how much it costs you to maintain this product once you have it.
Here’s a thought. Why not let the customer decide what it wants and needs?
I can’t wate until theese regulations get overturnned by the new Tea Parters. we will finally get rid of all thise forigners and insurence companies will get to make alot more money. That will deffinitely fix are economic problems
I smell troll.
In ruling that Obamacare’s requirement to purchase health insurance is “…penalty, not a tax, and must be defended under the Commerce Clause and not Congress’s taxing authority”…
Judge Vinson wrote:
“Congress should not be permitted to secure and cast politically difficult votes on controversial legislation by deliberately calling something one thing, after which the defenders of that legislation take an “Alice-in-Wonderland” tack and argue in court that Congress really meant something else entirely, thereby circumventing the safeguard that exists to keep their broad power in check.”
Of course, attempting to defend the purchase-mandate of Obamacare under either the (highly circumscribed) Congressional taxing authority OR the Commerce Clause would make the Founders shake their heads in utter disbelief at the overarching reach of a government they had assiduously designed to be highly limited in scope.
You have to excuse the federal courts decision in Detroit. Detroit has become Michigan’s bastion of socialism and worse. Not only does that decision require appeal, the entire city needs to be unincorporated and bulldozed to make way for an actual AMERICAN city.
If obamas mandate holds I sincerely hope everyone affected protests by refusing to purchase insurance and refusing to pay his penalty. That’ll keep him confounded until he loses the election in ’12 and the whole thing can be stricken from the books and REAL reforms implemented.
What is Obama going to do to you if you do not buy his insurance, [commonly known as extortion] he is going to have the IRS, [new brown shirts] arrest us and put us in jail. First they can not arrest all of us if we choose not to buy Obama Care. They are going to use fear to get you to buy Obama Insurance [just like the mob] and in this new health care! bill that nobody read, the IRS can get into your personal bank accounts and drain them, they will all so drain any equity a home owner has to get your insurance money. I say put me in jail then I will receive free medical and be around a more honest group of people
…that the individual mandate violates the Fifth Amendment guarantee that no one shall “be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”
The individual mandate (to purchase insurance) is deprivation of…cash… without due process of law.
Whatever one thinks of ObamaCare’s substance (and few think less of it than I do), nothing about the fundamental process of law was violated by its passage…
Passing massive social legislation through the budgetary process of “reconcilation” was unprecedented.
Barack Obama had been on record on many previous occasions saying such a tack would be wrong for that sort of legislation.
One of the few things I agree with him on.
…provide for the general welfare
I can’t imagine anything more inimical to the general welfare than (further) bureaucratization of the delivery of medical services.