The Department of Justice released a statement today saying that the government "strongly disagrees with the court’s ruling today and continue to believe – as other federal courts have found – that the Affordable Care Act is constitutional." The White House's Stephanie Cutter blogged that this is a "plain case of judicial overreaching."
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 health care they obtain. And the judge declared that the entire law is null and void even though the only provision he found unconstitutional was the “individual responsibility” provision. This decision is at odds with decades of established Supreme Court law, which has consistently found that courts have a constitutional obligation to preserve as a much of a statute as can be preserved. As a result, the judge’s decision puts all of the new benefits, cost savings and patient protections that were included in the law at risk....
We don’t believe this kind of judicial activism will be upheld and we are confident that the Affordable Care Act will ultimately be declared constitutional by the courts.
History and the facts are on our side. Similar legal challenges to major new laws -- including the Social Security Act, the Civil Rights Act, and the Voting Rights Act -- were all filed and all failed. And contrary to what opponents argue the new law falls well within Congress’s power to regulate economic activity under the Commerce Clause, the Necessary and Proper Clause, and the General Welfare Clause.
In a background call, senior administration officials stressed that implementation of the Affordable Care Act will continue (Vinson did not issue an injunction) and the administration will appeal this decision and is confident of a reversal. That view was echoed by a panel of legal experts in a conference call.
"This is a decision that has such radical implications that I'm confident it will be overturned," said former Solicitor General Walter Dellinger....
"The lack of deference to Congress here is just breathtaking," said Washington and Lee University professor Timothy Jost.
Neera Tanden of the Center for American Progress, who helped craft the law, noted that judges, "try to minimize the impact of their rulings, because of concerns over judicial activism and deference to other branches of government."
"I don't know that I've ever seen a severability analysis quite like that," said another senior administration official.
The role of Vinson's ideology in this decision seems to be pretty clear, when one sees his nod to the Tea Party in the ruling. All this "sets Vinson apart as an activist who has decided that Congress has no power to regulate insurance companies, establish exchanges, extend drug discounts to seniors, and give small businesses tax credits to help purchase insurance are all unconstitutional."
