Federal Judiciary

Judge nullifies entire health law

By Lyle Denniston

A federal judge in Florida, in the most sweeping decision yet in the constitutional controversy over the new federal health care law, on Thursday struck down the entire law.  After first ruling that Congress did not have power to require that virtually everyone have health insurance, Senior U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson of Pensacola decided that Congress would not have enacted any part of it without that provision so the law as a whole cannot stand.

If the ruling were to survive an inevitable appeal by the Obama Administration, Judge Vinson would have brought about the same practical result that the new Republican majority in the House had hoped to achieve by voting to repeal the entire measure.  But that repeal measure would not be likely to be passed by the Senate, so the courts — and ultimately the Supreme Court — may have the last word.

Here is one of the crucial parts of the judge’s reasoning for nullifying all parts of the 2,700-page law: “In the final analysis, this Act has been analogized to a finely crafted watch, and that seems to fit.  It has approximately 450 separate pieces, but one essential piece (the individual mandate) is defective and must be removed.  It cannot function as originally designed.  There are simply too many moving parts in the Act and too many provisions dependent (directly and indirectly) on the individual mandate and other health insurance provisions — which, as noted, were the chief engines that drove the entire legislative effort — for me to try and dissect out the proper from the improper, and the able-to-stand-alone from the unable-to-stand-alone.  Such a quasi-legislative undertaking would be particularly inappropriate in light of the fact that any statute that might conceivably be left over after this analysis is complete would plainly not serve Congress? main purpose and primary objective in passing the Act.”

Full post as published by SCOTUSBLOG on February 01, 2011 (boomark / email).