In a victory for opponents of the Obama health reform law, a three judge appeals court panel in Atlanta has found that the individual mandate provision, which requires people to buy health insurance, is unconstitutional - though the rest of the law is not.
The court's majority wrote that "the individual mandate was enacted as a regulatory penalty, not a revenue-raising tax, and cannot be sustained as an exercise of Congress's power under the Taxing and Spending Clause."
"Further, the individual mandate exceeds Congress's enumerated commerce power and is unconstitutional. This economic mandate represents a wholly novel and potentially unbounded asserts of congressional authorty; the ability to compel Americans to purchase an expensive health insurance product they have not elected to buy, and to make them re-purchase that insurance product every month for their entire lives."
But the appeals panel would not go as far as U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson, who put the entire law on hold, as this ruling found that the Obama health law could go on, even without the individual mandate.
"The individual mandate, however, can be severed from the remainder of the Act's myriad reforms," the Court wrote.
"The presumption of severability is rooted in notions of judicial restraint and respect for the separation of powers in our constitutional system. The Act's other provisions remain legally operative after the mandate's excision, and the high burden needed under Supreme Court precedent to rebut the presumption of severability has not been met."
This case was brought originally by Florida - then over two dozen other states joined the legal effort against the Obama health reform law.
The 11th Circuit ruling could be appealed either to the full appeals court, or directly to the U.S. Supreme Court.
We are also still awaiting a ruling in a similar case brought by the state of Virginia, in the 4th Circuit.
