PHOENIX --U.S. District Court Judge Henry Hudson has ruled that the federal health care law requiring individuals to purchase government-prescribed health insurance exceeds congressional powers and therefore violates the Constitution.
"This is the opening salvo in the battle to bring down one of the most intrusive laws ever passed," declared Clint Bolick, director of the Goldwater Institute Scharf-Norton Center for Constitutional Litigation, which has filed its own legal challenge to the law in federal court in Phoenix.
Judge Hudson's ruling in this lawsuit brought by the State of Virginia addressed only one of the legal challenges raised in the Goldwater Institute's lawsuit. The Goldwater Institute lawsuit, Coons v. Geithner, also challenges the law based on the individual right to medical autonomy, interference with state autonomy, and the creation of an unaccountable new cost-control agency called the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB). The Institute has asked District Court Judge Murray Snow for an injunction against provisions of the law prohibiting congressional repeal of IPAB. A decision is expected early next year.
Oral arguments in the lawsuit filed by 20 states, including Arizona, on additional legal grounds will be heard in a Florida court this week. "This law has almost as many constitutional vulnerabilities as it has pages," Mr. Bolick said.