Litigation

U.S. to Appeal Latest Health Care Law Setback

By Peter Hardin

The Obama administration’s Justice Department quickly announced it would appeal a federal judge’s ruling that declared the new health care overhaul unconstitutional, as a White House aide denounced “judicial activism.”

The ruling by Judge Roger Vinson in Pensacola, Fla. (photo at right), an appointee of President Ronald Reagan, said Congress went beyond its authority by requiring most Americans to buy health insurance. He said the unconstitutional nature of that provision rendered the entire law invalid (see Gavel Grab).

“We don’t believe this kind of judicial activism will be upheld, and we are confident that the (law) will ultimately be declared constitutional by the courts,” Stephanie Cutter, Obama’s deputy senior adviser, wrote on the White House blog, according to a USA Today article.

The charge of “judicial activism” was echoed by other critics. Ethan Rome, executive director of Health Care for America Now, wrote a Huffington Post essay entitled, “Florida Health Care Decision: Judicial Activism on Steroids.” UCLA law professor Adam Winkler was author of another Huffington Post commentary, entitled “Health Care Ruling Shows Judicial Activism is Alive and Well — and Living on the Right.”

In Salon, Andrew Leonard questioned what he called “a Tea Party shout-out in an opinion on health care reform.” Leonard went on to quote the following excerpt from Judge Vinson’s 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.”

Judge Vinson was profiled by the Associated Press. It reported that when he was in law school and his wife gave birth to their first child, he paid the doctor out of his own pocket. Judge Vinson “is known for maintaining control of his courtroom while letting everyone have their say,” according to the AP, is an ex-Navy pilot and is a former president of the American Camellia Society.

As Gavel Grab mentioned Monday, Judge Vinson’s ruling means four federal courts that have ruled on legal challenges to Obama’s signature domestic achievement, and they have split evenly in their decisions. In the end, the fate of the law may come down to one person, Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, according to a USA Today blog.

Full post as published by The Gavel on February 01, 2011 (boomark / email).