The administration of US President Barack Obama said it would appeal a Florida judge’s ruling that last year’s healthcare overhaul overstepped limits on congressional power by compelling people to buy insurance.
US District Judge Roger Vinson in Pensacola said on Monday that a provision of the law requiring Americans over 18 to obtain insurance coverage exceeded the power of Congress to regulate commerce under the US Constitution. Because the insurance mandate is central to the legislation, the entire law must be voided, he said.
The US said it might seek to block the decision while it appeals.
Florida sued on behalf of 13 states on March 23, the day US President Barack Obama signed into law the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, legislation intended to provide the US with almost universal healthcare coverage. The 955-page law also bars insurers from denying coverage to people who are sick and from imposing lifetime limits on costs. It includes pilot projects to test ideas like incentives for better results and bundled payments to medical teams for patient care.
Twenty-five states had joined Florida’s suit by Monday’s decision. Virginia sued separately on March 23 last year and Oklahoma filed its own suit on Jan. 21.
The White House called Vinson’s ruling “a plain case of judicial overreaching.” That echoed language the judge had used to describe the law as an example of Congress overstepping its authority.
“We are analyzing this opinion to determine what steps, if any — including seeking a stay — are necessary while the appeal is pending to continue our progress toward ensuring that Americans do not lose out on the important protections this law provides,” Tracy Schmaler, a spokeswoman for the US Justice Department, said in a statement on Monday.
Attorneys for the Obama administration had argued that the states did not have standing to challenge the law and that the case should be dismissed.
Opponents of the health overhaul praised the decision within minutes of its release on Monday afternoon. Republican House Speaker John Boehner said it shows Senate Democrats should follow a House vote to repeal the law.
“Today’s decision affirms the view, held by most of the states and a majority of the American people, that the federal government should not be in the business of forcing you to buy health insurance and punishing you if you don’t,” he said in a statement.
Democrats just as quickly slammed the decision.
“This lawsuit is nothing more than an attempt by those who want to raise taxes on small businesses, increase prescription prices for seniors and allow insurance companies to once again deny sick children medical care,” Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said in a prepared statement.
Stephen Presser, a professor of legal history at Northwestern University in Chicago, called Vinson’s decision “powerful” because it was the first finding that the mandate to purchase insurance can’t be separated from the rest of the law and saying it must be thrown out in its entirety. He called the judge’s analysis “absolutely right.”
Still, he said, “its utterly unclear at this point what long-range effect it will have,” because the ruling is enforceable only in the territory governed by the federal courts of Florida’s northern district, encompassing Pensacola, Gainesville and the state’s capital, Tallahassee.
Three other courts have weighed in on the law, two of them upholding it. In the third case, US District Judge Henry Hudson in Richmond, Virginia, voided the mandatory-coverage component, while allowing the rest of the law to stand.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY AP
PHISHING: The con might appear convincing, as the scam e-mails can coincide with genuine messages from Apple saying you have run out of storage For a while you have been getting messages from Apple saying “your iCloud storage is full.” They say you have exceeded your storage plan, so documents are no longer being backed up, and photos you take are not being uploaded. You have been resisting Apple’s efforts to get you to pay a minimum of ￡0.99 (US$1.33) a month for more storage, but it seems that you cannot keep putting off the inevitable: You have received an e-mail which says your iCloud account has been blocked, and your photos and videos would be deleted very soon. To keep them you need
The Israeli military has demolished entire villages as part of its invasion of south Lebanon, rigging homes with explosives and razing them to the ground in massive remote detonations. The Guardian reviewed three videos posted by the Israeli military and on social media, which showed Israel carrying out mass detonations in the villages of Taybeh, Naqoura and Deir Seryan along the Israel-Lebanon border. Lebanese media has reported more mass detonations in other border villages, but satellite imagery was not readily available to verify these claims. The demolitions came after Israeli Minister of Defense Israel Katz called for the destruction of
A US YouTuber who caused outrage for filming himself kissing a statue commemorating Korean wartime sex slaves has been sentenced to six months in prison, a court in Seoul said yesterday. Johnny Somali, 25, gained notoriety several years ago for recording himself doing a series of provocative stunts in South Korea and Japan, and streaming them on platforms such as YouTube and Twitch. South Korean authorities indicted Somali — whose real name is Ramsey Khalid Ismael — in 2024 on public order violations and obstruction of business, and banned him from leaving the country. “The court has sentenced him to six months in
The death toll from a shooting in western Afghanistan rose to 11 on Saturday, after gunmen targeted civilians at a picnic spot in Herat, the provincial authority said. Bullet marks were visible on a wall of the Sayed Mohammad Agha Shia shrine, while bloodstains marked a blanket abandoned at the scene. “Eleven people have been recorded dead and eight others wounded from Friday’s incident, with the condition of two of the wounded reported as critical,” Herat’s information office said in a statement. The update raises a toll of seven killed provided on Friday by the Afghan Ministry of Interior Affairs
RSS