From Florida, another judicial blow to individual mandate
January 31, 2011
Mark D. White
Today, Judge Roger Vinson of Florida reiterated Judge Henry E. Hudson's opinion from last month that the individual mandate provision of the Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional. From The Wall Street Journal:
In his ruling, Judge Roger Vinson, a Republican appointee, said that the law's requirement to carry insurance or pay a fee "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."
Notably, Vinson went even further than Hudson in one important sense:
The ruling also said that entire law "must be declared void," because the mandate to carry insurance is "not severable" from the rest of the law.
For my previous commentary on the individual mandate and health care, see here (on the Hudson decision in particular) and here (on the ACA in general).