The District Court in Florida recently declared the new Health Care Law unconstitutional. Of course, this decision will still need to be appealed to the Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court, but the Judge carefully outlined the reasons for his declaration in the written opinion. Although I would have listed a few more reasons, I was impressed with some of the rationales he listed. I especially liked the fact that he went back to the actual language in the Constitution as it was intended when written. I know that is not the popular way to interpret the Constitution, but it does make sense. To summarize: Interstate commerce means interstate trade. Trade means the movement of goods in exchange for money. Insurance does in no way fall within this category. Insurance is a service, not a physical product which can travel in a truck on I-35 between Texas and Illinois. Basically, despite all of the reasons you may have heard about why this law is unconstitutional, the best one is the simplest one: it is not authorized under Section 1 Article 8 – the section which grants Congress the power to pass laws. The powers in this Article were enumerated in order to LIMIT federal government. As you can imagine this was a huge concern to our founding fathers.
There has been some talk of repealing the Health Care Act, but I hope this doesn’t happen. I would like to see the Supreme Court rule on this issue. If they do interpret the Constitution the way it was intended, they will find that Congress did not have the authority to pass this Act and it would open the door for States to bring other lawsuits concerning federal laws outside the purview of Article 1, Section 8, of the Constitution. I can envision California taking on the establishment of the DEA, for example, or the passing of laws that criminalized the possession of marijuana and made it a federal offense under the Commerce Clause. (Remember, police power is reserved to the States so the only way these laws could be passed and these agencies established was through a tenuous connection to interstate commerce. Of course, the commerce clause wasn’t intended to criminalize trade. Well, at least the sale of marijuana would fall under the definition of trade. The problem is that on the one hand Congress wants to force citizens to buy the services of for-profit corporations and on the other wants to prevent citizens from purchasing a plant. Neither type of law is authorized in the Constitution. Of course, our founding fathers were not averse to marijuana – it is believed that George Washington grew hemp on his farm.)
The bottom line is that the federal government has gotten out of control of the people. It is no longer acting as a government for the people, but rather as a government for more government. Congress is passing laws in areas beyond what the Constitution permits. This is not a right v. left issue or a liberal v. conservative issue. It is simply a matter of whether or not the States are going to permit the Federal government to continue down this road. It is up to us as citizens to elect state officials who will stand up to federal encroachment. The best way to get our country back and our economy out of the gutter is to vote. Vote in your state elections – they really matter.
Health Care Law Unconstitutional – For Now
February 22, 2011 by kimberlyhouser
I missed these posts. So great to see you are back at it.
I can’t wait to see if this holds up all the way from appellate courts to the supreme court. Let’s hope it does and states can have the power they should have and were promised in the constitution.
I dont know how to feel about the healthcare issue particularly, but i do agree that the federal government is exercising too much power and our founding fathers would turn in their graves if they were to see what this country’s political system has become. If the federal gov’t is “for the people” than why are the people’s votes in their state considered secondary to the agenda of the federal gov’t politics? How can a state pass a law that their citizens voted on, and have it completely contradicted by the federal government. It is disrespectful to those individuals who work hard for change and it is a slap in the face to state’s who make changes.
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