The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia denied the Obama administration’s motion to dismiss Virginia’s lawsuit against Obamacare. Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli filed one of the three major lawsuits against President Obama’s healthcare law, focusing on the issue that the individual mandate, requiring every American to purchase health insurance, is unconstitutional.
For the reason my coauthor and I explained in the Wall Street Journal in January and last month, the Obamacare individual mandate is clearly unconstitutional. In researching this issue for our book, The Blueprint: Obama’s Plan to Subvert the Constitution and Build an Imperial Presidency, Ken Blackwell and I found that commanding Americans to buy insurance is not authorized by even the most liberal precedents of the Supreme Court interpreting the Commerce Clause, the Taxing and Spending Clause, or the General Welfare Clause.
The U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services (HHS) hoped to make quick work of this lawsuit by getting it dismissed. HHS argued both that Virginia lacks standing to bring this lawsuit, and that the lawsuit was not ripe for court consideration. Judge Henry Hudson disagreed in a 32-page decision.
This is only the beginning of the fight. All today’s ruling means that the lawsuit can go forward. But this was the first battle in the constitutional war to enforce the plain meaning of the Constitution.
So today was a victory for the rule of law, as it repudiates the overbearing policies of an imperial presidency by enforcing the provisions of the Constitution. May it be the first of many as Americans seek to reclaim their constitutional rights.
