BREAKING: Virginia judge throws out health-care mandates as unconstitutional
MSNBC and Fox News are reporting that U.S. District Court Judge Henry Hudson has ruled unconstitutional the portion of the new federal health-care reform law requiring individuals to purchase health insurance. Here’s a preview of the case. As it notes: But the decision will not have any immediate effect. The individual mandate portion of the law does not begin until 2014, and any decision will almost certainly be appealed to the Supreme Court. More details as they arrive. UPDATE: Kevin Sack at the New York Times reports: A federal district judge in Virginia ruled on Monday that the keystone provision in the Obama health care law is unconstitutional, becoming the first court in the country to invalidate any part of the sprawling act and insuring that appellate courts will receive contradictory opinions from below. Judge Henry E. Hudson, who was appointed to the bench by former President George W. Bush, declined the plaintiff’s request to freeze implementation of the law pending appeal, meaning that there should be no immediate effect on the ongoing rollout of the law. But the ruling is likely to create confusion among the public and further destabilize political support for legislation that is under fierce attack from Republicans in Congress and in many statehouses. In a 42-page opinion issued in Richmond, Va., Judge Hudson wrote that the law’s central requirement that most Americans obtain health insurance exceeds the regulatory authority granted to Congress under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution. The insurance mandate is central to the law’s mission of covering more than 30 million uninsured because insurers argue that only by requiring healthy people to have policies can they afford to treat those with expensive chronic conditions. The judge wrote that his survey of case law “yielded no reported decisions from any federal appellate courts extending the Commerce Clause or General Welfare Clause to encompass regulation of a person’s decision not to purchase a product, not withstanding its effect on interstate commerce or role in a global regulatory scheme.”
BREAKING: Virginia judge throws out health-care mandates as unconstitutional
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on December 13, 2010. Filed under