January 31, 2011 7:08 PM EST
PENSACOLA, Fla. (AP) — A federal judge in Florida ruled Monday that President Barack Obama's entire health care overhaul law is unconstitutional, placing even noncontroversial provisions under a cloud in a broad challenge that seems certain to be resolved only by the Supreme Court.
Unlike the previous Judge in Virginia, this ruling followed the same general reasoning as one last year from the federal judge in Virginia. But where the first judge's ruling would strike down the insurance requirement and leave the rest of the law in place, The Florida Judge took it much farther, invalidating provisions that range from Medicare discounts for seniors with high prescription costs to a change that allows adult children up to age 26 to remain on their parents' coverage...
Still, the particular issue remains the constitutionality of the law's core requirement that Americans carry health insurance, or face a high fine.
Judge Vinson wrote in a 78 page decision : "It is difficult to imagine that a nation which began, at least in part, as the result of opposition to a British mandate giving the East India Company a monopoly and imposing a nominal tax on all tea sold in America would have set out to create a government with the power to force people to buy tea in the first place," the judge wrote. "If Congress can penalize a passive individual for failing to engage in commerce, the enumeration of powers in the Constitution would have been in vain."
"In making his ruling, the judge has confirmed what many of us knew from the start: Obamacare is an unprecedented and unconstitutional infringement on the liberty of the American people," Florida Gov. Rick Scott said.
Other states that joined the lawsuit were: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Indiana, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Michigan, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Washington, Wisconsin and Wyoming.
Update: While most of the yellow press is reporting that this ain't an injunction...Riley delves into the matter and finds page 75 of the decision.
We don't need no steen-kin injunction.
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