"Broccoli Judge" Tosses Gutted PPACA

A federal judge said yesterday that all of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act should be tossed because of the insurance mandate, which he views as unconstitutional. The decision by US District Judge Roger Vinson is the culmination of a sweeping suit brought by the attorneys general from a parade of mostly red states,* Florida et al v HHS et al, which sought to knock down the Obama Administration's landmark bill. 

Vinson's ruling is distinct from that of Virginia's US District Judge Henry Hudson, who ruled similarly in December that PPACA's insurance mandate is unconstitutional. Hudson, however, attempted to negate the insurance mandate while leaving the rest of PPACA intact; Vinson (probably logically) tosses all of PPACA out the window after gutting its essence, the insurance mandate. "I must conclude that the individual mandate and the remaining provisions are all inextricably bound together in purpose and must stand or fall as a single unit," he wrote. "The entire act must be declared void."

Accordingly Vinson drew on his reading of the Commerce Clause and Congress's powers to penalize (or tax?) individuals for commercial inactivity (ie, not buying health insurance). He concluded, "If Congress can penalize a passive individual for failing to engage in commerce, the enumeration of powers in the Constitution would have been in vain...and we would have a Constitution in name only [emphasis added]."

Vinson is also the guy who brought up the broccoli question ("If [the federal government] decided everybody needs to eat broccoli because broccoli makes us healthy, they could mandate that everybody has to eat broccoli each week?"), which was considered by JDs from Boston University in a year-end issue of the NEJM.

Robert Lowes, writing for Medscape, has more of the story, including speculation on when the Supreme Court might consider one of the many cases challenging PPACA.

* Listed plaintiffs are officials from Florida, South Carolina, Nebraska, Texas, Utah, Louisiana, Alabama, Michigan, Colorado, Pennsylvania, Washington, Idaho, and South Dakota.