Opponents to the sweeping Health Care reforms that have just began to go into affect threatened to challenge the constitutionality of the new laws from the get go, and they have. At least twelve lawsuits have been filed in various district courts, some just hours after President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law. Most of these suits have been thrown out of court, but this week, for the second time, one of them found success.
In a 78-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson, a 1983 appointee of President Reagan from the Northern District of Florida, wrote that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 violated both the “Commerce Clause” and the “Necessary and Proper” clause of the Constitution because it sought to federally regulate inactivity — the individual choice not to purchase health insurance. This is the first time that a circuit court judge has attempted to throw out the entire bill. In December, Judge Henry Hudson in Virginia overturned only one provision of the law, the requirement that every American adult must buy health insurance or pay a fine, commonly called the individual mandate.
While many press outlets have made much of Vinson’s decision, it seems unlikely to have any real affect on the eventual outcome of the Supreme Court case that is sure to follow all of these contradictory state level attempts to overthrow the new bill. While most legal experts agree that there is a real chance that the Supreme Court may overturn the insurance mandate, as Judge Hudson of Virginia did, everyone, including Judge Vinson himself, agrees that it is unlikely they will overturn the entire bill.
It seems clear that the White House is correct when they called this, “a plain case of judicial overreaching.” Match that with a big case of news outlets over reacting and you’ve got a classic case of much ado about nothing. Then again, there is an unprecedented amount of hot air, and just flat out untruth, floating around regarding this inexplicably controversial reform. If you want to learn more about the Affordable Care Act, and discuss it with your kids, you can check out a break down of what it’s all about here, and the full text of the actual bill here.
