Obamacare: 11th Circuit Court of Appeals Strikes Down Obama’s Individual Mandate as Unconstitutional

INDIVIDUAL MANDATE OF OBAMACARE RULED UNCONSTITUTIONAL BY THE 11TH CIRCUIT COURT OF APPEALS …

In the battle against Obamacare and its unconstitutionality, this is the big one. The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that the individual mandate in Obamacare is unconstitutional. Twenty six states, that include Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Michigan, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Washington, Wisconsin, and Wyoming, are battling Barack Obama as to whether the US government has the right to force Americans to buy health care insurance.

Previously in January 2011, Judge Roger Vinson ruled on Obamacare and struck the entire law finding that the mandate could not be severed from the rest of the law. The 11th Circuit ruled that the mandate was unconstitutional, however, they did not throw out the entire law, finding that the mandate could be severed. This hardly makes sense with regards to severability.In any event, this is headed to the SCOTUS.

That last part makes little sense, since the law had no severability clause in it. Kill one part, you kill it all has been the theory. Kicking out the mandate but leaving the rest intact makes things even messier, in my opinion.

The Court’s opinion can be read HERE.

Le-gal In-sur-rec-tion has highlighted  many of the major points of the Court’s opinion.

We first conclude that the Act’s Medicaid expansion is constitutional. Existing Supreme Court precedent does not establish that Congress’s inducements are unconstitutionally coercive, especially when the federal government will bear nearly all the costs of the program’s amplified enrollments.

Next, the individual mandate was enacted as a regulatory penalty, not a revenue-raising tax, and cannot be sustained as an exercise of Congress’s power under the Taxing and Spending Clause. The mandate is denominated as a penalty in the Act itself, and the legislative history and relevant case law confirm this reading of its function.

Further, the individual mandate exceeds Congress’s enumerated commerce power and is unconstitutional. This economic mandate represents a wholly novel and potentially unbounded assertion of congressional authority: the ability to compel Americans to purchase an expensive health insurance product they have elected not to buy, and to make them re-purchase that insurance product every month for their entire lives. [...]

Obviously, Obamacare is headed to the US Supreme Court and most likely right before the 2012 Presidential election. This will be disastrous for Democrats and Obama reelection bid in 2012. Democrats ran from the Obamacare issue in the  2010 midterm elections as no Democrats wanted to embrace the fact that they rammed government sponsored healthcare down the throats of Americans and signed into law with no GOP votes a law that forced Americans to buy healthcare. Obamacare is hated by the American people and an overwhelming majority want it repealed. Presently, the polls at Real Clear Politics have only 38.8% in favor and 50.6% opposed. Good luck to Democrats dealing with this headache during the 2012 elections, a situation that they brought about themselves by going against the will of the American people. There will be retribution by We the People in 2012.

As reported at the Gateway Pundit via the AP, the White House disagrees with the 11th Circuit court’s decision. That’s it Barack, you keep touting Obamacare, you run on that in 2012, I am sure the American people will embrace it.

Obama adviser Stephanie Cutter says the White House strongly disagrees with an appeals court ruling Friday that struck down the insurance requirement at the center of a law.

She says the White House is confident that ruling will not stand.