“Our federal government is designed to be a government of limited, enumerated powers, and we do not believe it has the power to order citizens into commerce so it can then regulate their conduct under authority of the Commerce Clause. Whatever the merits or demerits of health care reform, the ends cannot justify the unconstitutional means.”
~Kansas Atty. Gen. Derek Schmidt
Fred Lucas
CNSNews.com
1/19/2011
(CNSNews.com) – More than half of the states—27 out of 50—are now challenging the constitutionality of Obamacare in federal court.
Six additional states–Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Ohio, Wisconsin and Wyoming–petitioned in federal court on Tuesday to join Florida’s law suit challenging the constitutionality of the health care law President Barack Obama signed last March. Nineteen states had previously joined with Florida in this suit, making the total number of states that are now a party to the suit 26.
Virginia, which has filed its own lawsuit against Obamacare, is the 27th state challenging the constitutionality of the health-care law in federal court. (A complete list of all 27 states appears at the bottom of this story.)
Florida’s suit challenges the constitutionality of Obamacare on two grounds, arguing that the law’s mandate that individuals must buy health insurance exceeds the legitimate power granted to the federal government to regulate interstate commerce under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution and also that the mandates the law imposes on state governments to expand their Medicaid programs violates the 10th Amendment, which limits the federal government to the powers delegated to it by the Constitution.
Virginia’s lawsuit challenges the constitutionality of the individual mandate…
…The Florida-led case is currently before U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson in Pensacola, Fla. Oral arguments were held on Dec. 16. Judge Vinson has not issued a ruling yet…
The complete article is at CNSNews.com
Update: At HotAir, Idaho, 6 Other States, to “Nullify” ObamaCare
Idaho, the first state to sue the federal government over the health care overhaul, has announced plans to resort to an obscure 18th century legal remedy that recognizes a state’s right to nullify any federal law that the state has deemed unconstitutional.
The doctrine, known as nullification, has its roots in the brand of governance practiced by the nation’s founding fathers. It was used as early as 1799 by then-law professor Thomas Jefferson, who wrote in a response to federal laws passed amid an undeclared naval war against France that
nullification, by those sovereignties, of all unauthorized acts … is the rightful remedy.
As a legal theory, nullification is grounded in the assumption that states, and not the U.S. Supreme Court, are the ultimate arbiter in cases where Congress and the president have “run amok.”…
And, at Ace of Spades, Nullification Rises Again
