Americans, it turns out, might yet be spared from the horrors of ObamaCare.
Not only are many Republican candidates running on vows to repeal the odious “reform,” but a federal judge in Florida last week ruled that a major lawsuit challenging the health-care law can proceed.
Judge Roger Vinson’s action is only preliminary: In refusing the Obama administration’s request to dismiss the suit, Vinson said the plaintiffs — attorneys general from 20 states — had raised enough legitimate issues to continue the process.
Yet Vinson’s 65-page ruling sounded sympathetic to the plaintiffs’ arguments.
That’s especially true with regard to ObamaCare’s individual mandate — the requirement that everyone must buy health insurance or pay a fine.
First, Vinson dismissed Team Obama’s claim that the mandate is constitutional because it’s a “tax.”
He said the administration was taking “an ‘Alice in Wonderland’ tack” and trying to argue in court that “Congress really meant something else entirely” during the ObamaCare debate when it explicitly denied the mandate was a tax.
If it had done that, he said, it would have been “circumventing the safeguard that exists to keep their broad power in check.”
Vinson also questioned the notion that Congress has the power to regulate all economic activity under the Constitution’s Commerce Clause.
ObamaCare’s “individual mandate applies across the board,” Vinson writes. “People have no choice, and there is no way to avoid it. . . . [People] either comply with it, or they are penalized. It is not based on an activity that they make the choice to undertake. Rather, it is based solely on citizenship and on being alive.”
In other words, this isn’t like the power states have to require automobile owners to purchase car insurance.
Buying a car is an activity an individual chooses to undertake. The impact of that purchase has ripple effects far and wide — thus giving government the power to mandate coverage.
With ObamaCare, however, folks would be penalized for not buying a specific product. That’s very different.
This case is only at the beginning stages. Undoubtedly, it will end up before the Supreme Court.
But the challenge to ObamaCare has passed a significant hurdle.
Opponents should be encouraged that at least one federal judge is concerned over the significant constitutional issues it raises.