Judge rules health care reform unconstitutional

WASHINGTON – A federal judge in Florida sided Monday with 26 states to declare President Barack Obama’s health care law unconstitutional, emboldening congressional Republicans, who are vowing to repeal the legislation before the Supreme Court weighs in.

The Obama administration will appeal the ruling, and White House aides said they’d continue to implement the law in phases between now and 2014.

U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson delivered the most sweeping blow to the landmark law, ruling that its requirement that individuals obtain health insurance exceeds Congress’ powers under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution, in part because it attempts to regulate inactivity rather than activity.

Since the individual mandate is the “keystone or linchpin” of the law, Vinson also ruled that it and all the other provisions of the law “are all inextricably bound together in purpose and must stand or fall as a single unit.” Vinson, whom President Ronald Reagan appointed to the bench, wrote that he’d reached his decision “reluctantly.”

“This has been a difficult decision to reach, and I am aware that it will have indeterminable implications,” Vinson said. “At a time when there is virtually unanimous agreement that health care reform is needed in this country, it is hard to invalidate and strike down a statute titled ‘The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.’ ”

Obama deputy senior adviser Stephanie Cutter, in a White House blog posting, called the ruling “a plain case of judicial overreaching” and “well out of the mainstream of judicial opinion.”

Vinson’s ruling follows last December’s ruling by U.S. District Judge Henry Hudson in Virginia, who found the individual mandate unconstitutional, and federal rulings last fall in Michigan and another Virginia district that supported the mandate.

Vinson’s ruling is broader because 26 states signed on to the Florida case and because he rejected not just the individual mandate but also the entire law.

The law includes provisions that cover people who have pre-existing conditions, young adults up to age 26 on their parents’ plans, seniors, small businesses, Medicaid recipients and others.

Democratic leaders and consumer and family advocacy groups who support the law criticized the ruling as political and predicted that it would be overturned.

Ethan Rome, executive director of Health Care for America Now, said the ruling was a gift to Republican governors and attorneys general who are friendly with private insurance companies. Ron Pollack, executive director of Families USA, called it “radical judicial activism run amok.” The American Public Health Association’s executive director, Georges C. Benjamin, said the ruling posed an “enormous” risk to millions of Americans.

Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said “there is little doubt the Supreme Court will be the final arbiter of this constitutional question.”

Opponents of the health care law celebrated Vinson’s ruling.

Carrie Severino, chief counsel for the conservative Judicial Crisis Network, called the ruling “an unqualified victory for the Founders’ framework of principled, limited government.”

House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, applauded the message that “the federal government should not be in the business of forcing you to buy health insurance and punishing you if you don’t.”

Two Senate Republicans, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and John Barrasso of Wyoming, said they would introduce legislation to let states opt out of the mandate and other provisions of the law.

The House of Representatives recently voted, largely on party lines, to repeal the law.

Because Democrats control 53 of 100 Senate seats, a legislative repeal appears unlikely. Republicans also are considering ways to dismantle the law piece by piece or withhold the money needed to implement it.