Obamacare's Fate in the United States Federal Court System

When U.S.  District Court Judge Roger Vinson ruled that Obamacare, the health care law adopted by the Democratic Congress, is unconstitutional, he was the fourth federal judge to rule on the question. A Virginia federal judge has also ruled that the law is unconstitutional, and two other federal judges have said it passes constitutional muster.

Judge Vinson based his decision on the requirement that every individual American buy health care insurance or face fines. His reasoning was that the Constitution’s Commerce Clause regulates “activities” that affect interstate commerce or the instrumentalities of interstate commerce, but the clause does not regulate non-“activity” (i.e., not to engage in an “activity” such as refusing to buy health insurance).

Judge Vinson’s decision is filled with references to the Founding Fathers Hamilton, Madison and Jefferson, noting that if the federal government can regulate non-“activity,” it has the unlimited power to regulate everything, just what the Founding Fathers were trying to avoid.

Because Judge Vinson found that the unconstitutional mandate of individuals to buy insurance or pay fines is not severable from the rest of the law, the entire law must be struck down, arguing that the mandate to buy insurance is a primary legislative purpose of the legislation:

“If...the statute is viewed as a carefully balanced and clockwork-like statutory arrangement comprised of pieces that all work toward one primary legislative goal, and if that goal would be undermined if a central part of the legislation is found to be unconstitutional, then severability is not appropriate,...”

Rep. Jim Jordan, chair of the Conservative Study Committee in the House, said ‘“Even if you ignore that Obamacare will slow our economy and lead to massive budget deficits, you cannot ignore that it violates the supreme law of the land.”

In a footnote to his 78-page decision, Judge Vinson referenced candidate Obama, who said in 2008 that that there are other ways to handle health care without requiring every American to purchase insurance:

“I note that in 2008, then-Senator Obama supported a health care reform proposal that did not include an individual mandate because he was at that time strongly opposed to the idea, stating that ‘if a mandate was the solution, we can try that to solve homelessness by mandating everybody to buy a house....”

He used Obama’s words to argue that the law was an unprecedented exercise of federal power because it regulates non-“activity” and not just “activity.”   

Vinson also refers to British policies on tea before the 1776 American Revolution to question whether the Founding Fathers would have ever approved what Vinson called a far-reaching law, writing:

“It is difficult to imagine that a nation which began, at least in part, as the result of opposition to a British mandate giving the East India Company a monopoly and imposing a nominal tax on all tea sold in America would have set out to create a government with the power to force people to buy tea in the first place,...”

Judge Vinson also warned of the Pandora’s Box that would be opened if the health-care law were allowed to stand, saying that it could open the doors to virtually unlimited power by Congress.

“It would be a radical departure from existing case law to hold that Congress can regulate inactivity under the Commerce Clause. If it has the power to compel an otherwise passive individual into a commercial transaction with a third party merely by asserting — as was done in the act — that compelling the actual transaction is itself ‘commercial and economic in nature, and substantially affects interstate commerce,’ it is not hyperbolizing to suggest that Congress could do almost anything it wanted,...”

He adds:

“The mere status of being without health insurance, in and of itself, has absolutely no impact whatsoever on interstate commerce (not ’slight,’ ‘trivial,’ or ‘indirect,’ but no impact whatsoever) — at least not any more so than the status of being without any particular good or service.”

The Vinson decision has given conservative opponents of Obamacare a leg up on their opponents, but it is the Supreme Court that will surely have the final say on the law after other pending cases work their way up through the federal the court system.