Major Mistake In ObamaCare Ruling Will Keep Virginia’s Challenge Alive

Publius
Big Government
9/14/2011

“Virginia filed this action on March 23, 2010, the same day that the President signed the Affordable Care Act into law. The Governor of Virginia did not sign the VHCFA into law until the next day.”  This is important, the court asserted, because “the only apparent function of the VHCFA is to declare Virginia’s opposition to a federal insurance mandate. And, in fact, the timing of the VHCFA, along with the statements accompanying its passage, make clear that Virginia officials enacted the statute for precisely this declaratory purpose.”

Via The Heartlander

In ruling last week the Commonwealth of Virginia lacks standing to challenge the individual mandate provision of Obamacare, a panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit made a “rookie” factual error serious enough to call for invalidation of its entire decision.

In ruling last week the Commonwealth of Virginia lacks standing to challenge the individual mandate provision of Obamacare, a panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit made a “rookie” factual error serious enough to call for invalidation of its entire decision.

Virginia had enacted a state statute — the Virginia Health Care Freedom Act (VHCFA) — declaring the individual mandate contained in the Obamacare bill did not apply to its citizens. Virginia then filed a lawsuit alleging the individual mandate violates the Commerce Clause of the United States because the federal government lacks the constitutional power to require individual citizens to purchase health insurance or pay a penalty.

The federal appellate court held last week it could not reach the merits of this constitutional claim because Virginia lacked standing to assert it. The court’s reasoning was the federal individual mandate was already a law when the Virginia statute was passed, so the state statute amounted to nothing more than a political attack on it – a statement of “generalized grievances” about it.

The problem here is the court is wrong on the timing…

The article continues at Big Government.

Update: Thomas Jefferson on “the rightful remedy to unconstitutional actions of federal government” at Green Mountain Scribes.

 

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