Judge Roger Vinson’s Monday decision was not the first time a federal judge struck down the portion of the federal health care reforms that requires most Americans to either buy insurance or pay a penalty. # A Virginia judge ruled against that provision in December, in a case separate from the one brought in Pensacola by Florida and 25 other states. But one line, on page 76 of Vinson’s 78-page opinion, summarizes what sets his decision apart: “Because the individual mandate is unconstitutional and not severable, the entire Act must be declared void.” # The Virginia decision struck down the mandate more narrowly, leaving the rest of the law intact.
“„The statute is, after all, called “The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act,” not “The Abstinence Education and Bone Marrow Density Testing Act.” The Act, like a defectively designed watch, needs to be redesigned and reconstructed by the watchmaker. #
“„There is quite literally no decision that, in the natural course of events, does not have an economic impact of some sort. The decisions of whether and when (or not) to buy a house, a car, a television, a dinner, or even a morning cup of coffee also have a financial impact that — when aggregated with similar economic decisions — affect the price of that particular product or service and have a substantial effect on interstate commerce. #
“„Indeed, a survey of the legal landscape revealed that there was “very little support for the plaintiffs’ coercion theory argument” as every single federal Court of Appeals called upon to consider the issue has rejected the coercion theory as a viable claim. #
“„Their administration’s lawyers are hoping that the next judges who take this case are more concerned with Supreme Court precedent than with, say, the Federalist Papers. “In a frequently cited law review article,” writes Vinson, “one Constitutional scholar has painstakingly tallied each appearance of the word ‘commerce’ in Madison’s notes on the Constitutional Convention and in The Federalist, and discovered that in none of the ninety-seven appearances of that term is it ever used to refer unambiguously to activity beyond trade or exchange.” The scholar being quoted here is Georgetown’s Randy Barnett, the intellectual force behind the Repeal Amendment. #
“„David Rivkin, a conservative lawyer in Washington who represents the plaintiffs, said that the 26 states that are party to the lawsuit are no longer subject to any of the law’s requirements – unless the federal government obtains a stay of Vinson’s order from an appeals court. White House officials firmly rejected that view. “Implementation will proceed apace,” one senior White House official said in a background briefing for reporters.#