ObamaCare Falls

Federal Judge Roger Vinson has struck down the entire so‐​called Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act as unconstitutional. Excerpts from the opinion:

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…


The individual mandate is outside Congress’ Commerce Clause power, and it cannot be otherwise authorized by an assertion of power under the Necessary and Proper Clause. It is not Constitutional.


[O]n the unique facts of this particular case, the record seems to strongly indicate that Congress would not have passed the Act in its present form if it had not included the individual mandate. This is because the individual mandate was indisputably essential to what Congress was ultimately seeking to accomplish. It was, in fact, the keystone or lynchpin of the entire health reform effort…


Because the individual mandate is unconstitutional and not severable, the entire Act must be declared void.

What’s more, it appears that the Obama administration must seek intervention from a higher court if it wants to keep implementing ObamaCare. Even though Vinson declined to issue an injunction forbidding the administration to implement the law, he did so because of:

a long‐​standing presumption “that officials of the Executive Branch will adhere to the law as declared by the court. As a result, the declaratory judgment is the functional equivalent of an injunction”…“declaratory judgment is, in a context such as this where federal officers are defendants, the practical equivalent of specific relief such as an injunction”…Thus, the award of declaratory relief is adequate and separate injunctive relief is not necessary.

In other words, absent intervention from a higher court, HHS must now sit on its hands.