Health care law: At odds with Constitution

We’ve just filed a federal complaint directly challenging the constitutionality of the health care law in federal court in Washington, D.C. We represent five U.S. residents and federal taxpayers who assert that the mandate forcing Americans to purchase health insurance violates the U.S. Constitution and the religious rights of several of the plaintiffs. The lawsuit is posted here.

The complaint argues that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate, along with the imposition of shared responsibility payments for failing to buy and maintain qualifying health insurance, “exceeds the power of Congress” and is “unconstitutional and cannot be enforced.”

At the same time, we are supporting key lawsuits already filed by a number of states. We will file an amicus brief soon backing Florida’s legal challenge. And, this week, we filed an amicus brief in federal court in Virginia on behalf of 28 members of Congress and more than 70,000 Americans who oppose the individual insurance mandate provision in the health care law. With our brief, we’re supporting the Commonwealth of Virginia’s lawsuit and contention that the mandate violates the Commerce Clause.

“Congress cannot pass just any law that seems most efficiently to address a national problem,” the brief asserts. “Every federal law must derive from one of the grants of authority found in the Constitution. This the individual insurance mandate does not do.”

We’re dedicated, along with those represented in our brief, to the founding principles of limited government and assert in the brief that “the Commerce Clause contains boundaries that Congress may not trespass no matter how serious the nation’s healthcare problems.”

You can read the brief here, which includes the complete list of the 28 members of Congress represented in the brief. Among the members of the House of Representatives who’ve signed on to the brief: Reps. Eric Cantor and Bob Goodlatte of Virginia. Also included, House Minority Leader John Boehner and Rep. Paul Broun of Georgia, one of three medical doctors represented, who said: “In a haste to ram through their healthcare agenda, Congress and the President overstepped their Constitutional authority. Never before has Congress required Americans to purchase a private good or service or else suffer a financial penalty.”

He’s absolutely correct. The individual insurance mandate represents an unconstitutional power-grab by the federal government — a clear violation of the Commerce Clause. From the very start, a majority of Americans never wanted this government-run health care law.

And most Americans understand that including a provision forcing them — under penalty of law — to purchase insurance is wrong.

The Constitution specifically grants the federal government, including Congress, limited powers. It’s clear that this mandate goes well beyond those enumerated powers and represents the ultimate power play — Congress and the federal government acting as if they possess a police power to pass and enforce any law that they deem advisable.

This is an unprecedented assault on the constitutional freedoms of Americans. We’re hopeful the federal court challenges will succeed and conclude that this flawed provision is not only unconstitutional but unenforceable as well.

Jay Sekulow is Chief Counsel of the Washington, D.C.-based American Center for Law and Justice