A Florida judge has struck down the Affordable Care Act, ruling on a case filed by 25 Republican attorneys general and governors.
The ruling drew a strong response from President Barack Obama's administration.
"This ruling is well out of the mainstream of judicial opinion," said Stephanie Cutter, special assistant to the White House.
According to Cutter, 12 federal judges have dismissed challenges to the constitutionality of the health reform law, and two judges – in the Eastern District of Michigan and Western District of Virginia – have upheld the law. In one other case, a federal judge in the Eastern District of Virginia issued a very narrow ruling on the constitutionality of the health reform law’s “individual responsibility” provision and upheld the rest of the law.
The Jan. 31 ruling by Judge Roger Vinson in the Northern District of Florida, based in Pensacola, "is a plain case of judicial overreaching," Cutter said. "The judge’s decision contradicts decades of Supreme Court precedent that support the considered judgment of the democratically elected branches of government that the act’s “individual responsibility” provision is necessary to prevent billions of dollars of cost-shifting every year by individuals without insurance who cannot pay for the healthcare they obtain."
Vinson declared that the law is null and void, though the only provision he found unconstitutional was the "individual responsibility" provision.
Cutter said the decision is at odds with decades of established Supreme Court law which has found that courts have a constitutional obligation to preserve as a much of a statute as can be preserved. As a result, she said, Vinson's decision puts all of the new benefits, cost savings and patient protections that were included in the law at risk.
Rep. Michael Burgess, MD, (R-Tex.) said the ruling sends a clear message that more than half of the states know that the healthcare law is not good for America.
"The fight for true reform is far from over," he said. "We must continue to work to repeal the legislation that was signed into law and replace it with reform that will create a healthcare system that is focused on patients instead of payments, quality instead of quantity, affordability instead of cheapness and innovation instead of stagnation."
[Why does one Virginia judge think the mandate is unconstitutional?]
Last week, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), along with 21 other Democratic leaders, filed a legal brief in a Michigan court defending the constitutionality of the right of Congress to require every American to buy health insurance. This particular case is significant because it is the first out of 26 such cases to reach the appelate court system.
Columbia Law School Professor Gillian Metzger said Judge Vinson’s decision declaring the entire Affordable Care Act unconstitutional represents "a remarkable assertion of judicial power fundamentally at odds with Supreme Court precedent."
"The combination of Judge Vinson’s substantive and remedial rulings is a decision that displays marked hostility to effective congressional regulation," Metzger said.
Christopher Jennings, president of Jennings Policy Strategies and former senior healthcare advisor to President William Clinton, called the lawsuits "a real threat" – but not in the long haul.
"If you take away the mandate, you take away aspects of ACA that people care about, including health insurance reforms," he said. If that happens, he said, the broad host of stakeholders supporting the law will push back in its defense.
For every month that goes by the ACA becomes "part of the fabric" of the U.S. healthcare system, making it harder to repeal, Jennings said.
[Read more about what Democrats are doing about the lawsuits.]