DL Tolleson.com

In case you haven’t been closely following it—or you’ve been following mainstream media reports—team Obama got a figurative whipping for having ignored constitutional law and the court. As you may know by now, about 28 states filed suit against the government, arguing that Obama Care was unconstitutional. The Florida Supreme Court agreed, and in his 75-page decision, the judge said, basically, that because the foundation of the individual mandate upon which Obama Care rested was unconstitutional, the whole thing was null and void.

NOTE: Some have argued that the government made the mistake of not employing Obama Care “severability” language that would have allowed the implementation of legal portions of the law while unconstitutional portions were thrown out: Be that a mistake or not, it wouldn’t have mattered. Since both the government and the judge agreed that the law was nothing without the individual mandate—which was subsequently ruled unconstitutional at the State level—“severability” became a moot point.

At any rate, that was 10 days ago and starting 9 days ago the Executive branch of our government has openly violated the Constitution by proceeding with implementation of Obama Care instead of adhering to the judge’s ruling that stayed implementation. They should have ceased implementation and immediately appealed. What Team Obama next did next was insulting to the judge: They filed for a clarification since, they said, the judge hadn’t issued a separate “stay” that allowed them to implement the law while on appeal. The reason for the filing being an insult is found on page 75 of the original ruling, where the judge CLEARLY said that the decision was the declaratory equivalent of a stay and that he EXPECTED the government to comply.

And so when this clarification thing came up, the judge socked it to them. The end result, after a very much needed chastising, was that the Judge went a step further than they would have liked. He has forced the administration to stop playing word games by allowing them 7 days of further implementation, but they must also appeal to either the 11th Circuit or the Supreme Court by that 7th day.

So, Obama and company now have to actually abide by the rules. I’m sure they’ll file in time.^*

For more details see this link: Speed Up or Stop.¹

^* Update, February 2019—As history now documents, the Obama administration did indeed appeal to the Supreme Court. The Obama administration had, theretofore, held that the Affordable Care Act (Obama Care) was not a tax. However, if not a tax the ACA was unconstitutional and Justice John Roberts re-interpreted the law and thus “rewrote” it into a “Constitutionally acceptable” (my words) tax. It wasn’t until January of 2017 that President Donald Trump signed an Executive order eliminating the ACA’s personal mandate, the most unconstitutional and onerous portion of the law. The Executive Order instructed the Health and Human Services Department to do all it could to “grant exceptions from” or “delay” the enforcement of the mandate, thus doing what was described by many as, “basically telling the bureaucracy to let it die from neglect.”

The ACA’s personal mandate was the only time that the U.S. government required a citizen to enter into a contractual agreement with a second party (an insurance company) for their (the Citizen’s) potential own benefit—and it was a requirement inherent to the citizen existing (living). This is a substantially different proposition than the ACA’s proponents making a comparison to automobile liability insurance, which differs in two major respects: In the case of automobile liability insurance the government requires a citizen (one party) to enter into a contractual agreement with an insurance company (a second party) for the potential benefit of other citizens (third parties) and it is requirement inherent to the citizen’s choice to operate a motor vehicle.

NOTE: In regard to the Executive Order, my lingering concern is that it is subject to reversal by the Executive Order of a subsequent President.

References

¹ Spakovsky, Hans von. “Judge Vinson to Obama: Speed up the Appeal or Stop Implementing Obamacare.” The Daily Signal, The Daily Signal, 4 Mar. 2011, https://www.dailysignal.com/2011/03/03/judge-vinson-to-obama-speed-up-the-appeal-or-stop-implementing-obamacare/, (Retrieved March 4, 2011).