Judge Vinson says "no" to ObamaCare and with good reason. Here is Judge Vinson's decision.

We begin our overview of the Pensacola Court's decision against the constitutionality of the individual mandate written into the health care bill we call ObamaCare with a list of the 26 states involved in this lawsuit:

The states are Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Michigan, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Washington, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.

We have high lighted in red those states that promise to be "players" in the coming 2012 elections. We are not simply looking at "fly-over states." The list is important for more reasons than the legal debate over ObamaCare. Our high lighted list may include states that directly effect the defeat of Mr. Obama.

According to the opening comments of the judgment statement, this suit was filed "minutes after the President signed [the bill]."

Judge Vinson saw this case as a challenge to the Constitution and nothing more. He writes,

whether the Act is wise or unwise legislation, or whether it will solve or exacerbate
the myriad problems in our health care system. In fact, it is not really about our
health care system at all. It is principally about our federalist system, and it raises
very important issues regarding the Constitutional role of the federal government.

Coercion Theory and Medicaid

The Coercion Theory was the state's challenge to the Medicaid requirements in the health care bill. Judge Vinson pointed out that in every case, the Coercion Theory has been rejected by the courts. In short, Vinson found that no coercion exists when a state is mandated to provide a portion of expense as it administers Medicaid. It is free to not participate in Medicaid and, it has the sovereign power to increase taxes to pay for any mandated increases. While neither consideration is a viable political choice, still, these two suggested actions render "coercion" a non-starter when it comes to legal complaint against - in this case - the current health care reform bill.

Part I of the state's complaint was rejected by Vinson and his decision appears to be within accepted legal precedent.

Standing

Part II of the complaint, however, proved to be quite another matter.

In the filing of the general complaint, state entities and two individuals were listed as "complainants."

Mary Brown was the name of one of the individual applicants. There were 8 points in her portion of the filing, to wit:

One of the individual plaintiffs, Mary Brown, has filed a declaration in which
she avers, among other things: (i) that she is a small business owner and member
of NFIB; (ii) that she does not currently have health insurance and has not had
health insurance for the past four years; (iii) that she regularly uses her personal
funds to meet her business expenses; (iv) that she is not eligible for Medicaid or
Medicare and will not be eligible in 2014; (v) that she is subject to the individual
mandate and objects to being required to comply as she does not believe the cost
of health insurance is a wise or acceptable use of her resources; (vi) that both she
and her business will be harmed if she is required to buy health insurance that she
neither wants nor needs because it will force her to divert financial resources from
her other priorities, including running her business, and doing so will “threaten my
ability to maintain my own, independent business”; (vii) that she would be forced
to reorder her personal and business affairs because, “[w]ell in advance of 2014, I
must now investigate whether and how to both obtain and maintain the required
insurance”; and lastly, (viii) that she “must also now investigate the impact” that
compliance with the individual mandate will have on her priorities and whether she
can maintain her business, or whether, instead, she will have to lay off employees,
close her business, and seek employment that provides qualifying health insurance
as a benefit.

The second individual was a retired person, Kaj Ahlburg. He maintained that he was 1) on a fixed income; that 2) , he was in good health; 3) that he had no intentions of buying insurance and was financially able to pay for health care for himself and his family; 4) that he objected " . . . to being forced to comply with it as it does not represent “a sensible or acceptable use of my financial resources.”

The judge found that both individuals had "standing" to bring suit against the bill. In other words, they had a legal right to appear and file a complaint before the court.

The two individuals were not the only filers. They were joined by National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) and the 26 Attorneys General or Governors of the several states listed above.

Because Mary Brown was a member of the NFIB, and was found to have standing. the organization of which she was a member also merited "standing" in this case. The states, Vinson found, had several grounds for standing (cf p 17 ff lf the PDF).

The Courts Decision In Rejecting the Governments Argument

In short, the judge found this to be the compelling consideration in his decision: "If Congress can penalize a passive individual for failing to engage in commerce, the enumeration of powers in the Constitution would have been in vain for it would be “difficult to perceive any limitation on federal power.”

The government essentially argued that passivity is, in fact, a form of activity, giving the government the legal right to govern its expression. Vinson did not agree.

Turns out that some within the Federal Court system, actually believe there are limits to the power of the federal government. In this case, the federal government cannot tell individuals how they will spend their time doing nothing. Seriously. That is what is at stake. You offer health insurance; I sit around my house and do nothing about the offering; you levy a fine against me for that inaction.

Such reasoning is what convinced the judge that the government's defense of the law on this point, had no merit in the final analysis.

And that is our overview of the decision. The more detailed explanation is given to you immediately below.

The judgment's explanation of the District Court is a 78 page PDF found here. You will find the document to be written in plain English and value on several levels.

Update: we must add one additional thought. The judge's decision was against the entire health care bill, but only the individual mandate is included in his constitutional analysis. The question, then, is this: why not reject the mandate rather than the entire law?

And the answer is in the writing of the bill, itself. In the original draft, a severability clause was written into the bill. In the final draft, it was excluded. Without that clause, the law has to be considered as a whole; it is "all or nothing" without the severablity clause and the Democrats, in their infinite wisdom, decided -- actually decided -- to exclude that legal idea. Go figure.

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