Court Permits Legal Challenge to Health Reform Law to Proceed
This post was written by Carol Colborn Loepere and Scot T. Hasselman.
As widely reported in the media, on October 14, 2010, a federal judge in Florida ruled that he will allow a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act to proceed. The lawsuit argues that the ACA's individual mandate that people buy health insurance or else pay a penalty exceeds Congress's authority under the Commerce Clause. Judge Roger Vinson agreed, holding that Congress is attempting to regulate not interstate commerce but economic inactivity by requiring individuals to purchase a private product "based solely on citizenship and on being alive." Judge Vinson ruled that the plaintiffs "have at least stated a plausible claim that the line has been crossed" concerning the outermost bounds of federal power under the Constitution. Litigation pending in Virginia has also been allowed to proceed, while a U.S. District Court judge in Michigan dismissed a separate challenge to the litigation, raising the likelihood that the constitutionality of the law will need to be resolved by the U.S. Supreme Court.
