by Keith Laing
The News Service of Florida
The lawsuit challenging the federal health care law enacted this spring is likely to proceed after a federal judge in Pensacola said Tuesday that he was leaning toward letting at least some of the claims by several states against the administration continue.
After asking pointed questions of lawyers for the U.S. Department of Justice, and attorneys representing Florida and 18 other states, U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson said he would probably agree with the federal government on some claims and dismiss part of the suit, but let parts of it proceed.
Vinson did not suggest which parts of the claims against the Obama administration were likely to survive, meaning the contours of the case will not be clear until he issues his formal ruling Oct. 14. He did, however, set a schedule for future briefs and hearings, which included Dec. 16 oral arguments on a motion to find the health care law unconstitutional that attorneys for the state plan to file.
That was enough for Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum, who filed the legal challenge a day after President Barack Obama signed the health care law in March, to say Tuesday he was optimistic the case would go forward.
“I think we’ll be in standing at the end of the day for the case,” he told the News Service of Florida. “Obviously how he rules on all of this is very important to us. We certainly want to be there with the individual mandate; we want to be there with our claims for the states that we’re concerned about, the overload of Medicaid and so forth and state sovereignty.”
The National Federation of Independent Businesses, a co-plaintiff in the case, was hopeful Vinson would side with them on standing too.
“We are very encouraged,” said Karen Harned, National Federation of Independent Businesses executive director. “We felt that the constitution was really the star of the show today during arguments and we feel we’ve got that on our side.”
The DOJ argued that Tuesday should have been the end of the line for the lawsuit because the states, the NFIB and two Florida residents couldn’t challenge the legality of the health care law because they would not be affected by it until 2014, when the law is scheduled to be implemented.
The states countered that the law violates the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution by requiring residents to purchase insurance, and that the requirement that states expand their Medicaid rolls violates the states’ rights guaranteed in the 10th Amendment.
Vinson questioned both sides, but appeared to be more sympathetic to arguments put forth by the states.
“This really puts all 50 states on the short end of the stick, because all the federal government has to say is ‘we’re going to give you some money, and you’re going to have to do this,’” Vinson said. “And for something such as health care, which (is) essential, the states are left powerless. Is that where we are?”
Vinson pointed out that Congress and President Obama maintained during debates in Congress that the health care bill would not raise taxes, but the Justice Department was arguing in court Tuesday that the bill could not be challenged because the federal government had the authority to levy taxes.
“I’ve given this a lot of thought,” Vinson said. “We had the Whiskey Rebellion because people rebelled against having to pay taxes for the whiskey that they made. The government never made people buy whiskey.”