U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson of Florida was the second judge to determine that forcing every American to buy government-controlled health insurance violates the U.S Constitution. But he is the first to decide the entire law must fall because the individual insurance mandate can’t be separated from the other provisions.
Ruling Monday in a lawsuit brought by 26 states including Arizona, Judge Vinson found the law is about more than health care—it is “principally about our federalist system, and raises important issues regarding the Constitutional role of the federal government.”
“Never before has Congress required everyone buy a product from a private company (essentially for life) just for being alive and residing in the United States,” the judge declared, adding that it “would be a major departure from existing case law to hold that Congress can regulate inactivity under the Commerce Clause.”
He quoted President Obama, who quipped during his 2008 campaign that “if a mandate was the solution, we can try to solve homelessness by mandating everybody to buy a house.”
Judge Vinson cited the Health Care Freedom Act, which the Goldwater Institute helped to draft and has been adopted by Arizona and five other states, as a reason for those states to have proper standing to challenge the individual mandate.
A federal judge in Virginia also found the insurance mandate to be unconstitutional, while two other courts have upheld it. The cases now go to different courts of appeals, and the U.S. Supreme Court could resolve the issue by next year.
Meanwhile, the Goldwater Institute’s legal challenge, which targets a number of vulnerabilities in the law, is proceeding in federal district court in Phoenix.
But we already can chalk one up for liberty in this titanic struggle pitting federal regulation versus state autonomy and individual freedom.
Learn More:
Goldwater Institute: Coons v. Geithner
Goldwater Institute: Congress won’t rein in new federal agency with unconstitutional powers over health care
U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson: Summary judgment in Florida v. Sebelius
Clint Bolick is the Goldwater Institute’s litigation director, where he sues the government for violating its own laws. Before joining the Goldwater Institute in 2007, Bolick was co-founder of the Institute for Justice and later served as president of the Alliance for School Choice. Bolick has authored several books and has argued and won cases in the U.S. Supreme Court, the Arizona Supreme Court, and state and federal courts from coast to coast. 
Informative post. But what bothers me is the timidity of the states now that this judge has declared the law unconstitutional. Gov. Brewer was interviewed Tuesday night by Greta, and she waffled over whether Arizona would proceed with complying with the law. Meanwhile, on the White House website it plainly states that the Obama administration is continuing to implement the law, in defiance of Judge Vinson’s ruling. If they want to continue to implement Obamacare, they should go to the 11th Circuit, file an appeal, and ask for a Stay of the ruling. But they’re acting like they can just ignore the ruling, which means that they wouldn’t even have to appeal. It’s chutzpah on steroids.
Obama’s style is to push the envelope of his power beyond what any president had ever done before. Republicans and the states that won this lawsuit should be jumping up and down protesting this, threatening charging the administration with contempt of court, dropping hints of impeachment. We can’t sit idly by and let this defiance of the rule of law go on without strenuous objection.