Judge Rules ObamaCare Mandate Unconstitutional

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By Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Journalist

A U.S. District Judge dealt a blow to the Obama Administration’s signature health care law when he ruled that a key requirement in the bill, that most citizens have health insurance, is unconstitutional.

Bloomberg is reporting  Judge Henry Hudson of Richmond, Virginia found that requiring most people to get insurance or pay a fine – as the law mandates starting in 2014 – “exceeds the constitutional boundaries of congressional power.”

The 42-page ruling represents the government’s first loss in a series of challenges to the law that have been mounted in federal courts in Virginia, Michigan and Florida, involving a total of 20 states. Most Constitutional law scholars believe that unless Congress changes the law and removes or somehow mitigates the mandate, the fate of ObamaCare will ultimately be decided at the U.S. Supreme Court.
White House spokesman Robert Gibbstried to put a positive spin on the outcome. “Our belief is that when all the legal wrangling is done, this is something that will be upheld,” he said during the daily press briefing.

Virginia’s attorney general Ken Cuccinelli II, who brought the case, was elated.  “I am gratified we prevailed,” Cuccinelli said in a statement. “This won’t be the final round . . . but today is a critical milestone in the protection of the Constitution.”

The win is expected to bolster the drive of conservative lawmakers and the public who want the law repealed, or at  least significantly changed during the upcoming session of Congress.

“We applaud Judge Hudson for striking down the individual mandate recognizing that no part of the Constitution empowers the federal government to command American citizens to spend their own personal money to purchase health insurance,” said Ken Klukowski, Special Legal Counsel for the Family Research Council.

“We call on the incoming Congress to quickly move to repeal this unconstitutional law in its entirely not merely to tinker with various provisions. Such tinkering would likely doom the legal challenges that are the best hope for dooming this fundamentally flawed law that is a high taxing, poorly thought out, and taxpayer funding of abortion monstrosity.”

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