14 states sue to stop Obama care

Telegraph:

Other states are expected to join the fight against the far-reaching reforms which could place huge burdens on state budgets. Many are also considering legislation to block a provision which requires most people to buy insurance or pay a fine.

"This lawsuit should put the federal government on notice that Florida will not permit the constitutional rights of our citizens and the sovereignty of our state to be ignored or disregarded," said Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum.

Mr McCollum, a Republican who is running for state governor in the upcoming election, said the federal government had no right to impose a "tax on living" by forcing people to buy insurance.

The historic $940-billion overhaul will extend coverage to some 32 million Americans who are currently uninsured, ensuring 95 per cent of US citizens under age 65 will have health insurance.

The lawsuit filed in a Florida federal court calls the reform bill an "unprecedented encroachment" on state sovereignty by requiring states to spend billions on expanding health care coverage to the poor.

"This is not a partisan issue," he told reporters. "It's a question for most of us in the states of the cost it is to our people and to the rights and freedoms of the individual citizens."

McCollum was joined by the Republican attorneys general of Alabama, Colorado, Idaho, Michigan, Nebraska, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, and Washington, as well as the Democratic attorney general of Louisiana.

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Virginia filed a separate suit that appears to jump through all the hoops to get heard:

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The suit argues that the legislation's mandate that individuals purchase health insurance exceeds the federal government's power to regulate interstate commerce under the U.S. Constitution. And it asserts that Virginia has standing to sue over the issue because of a new state law that prohibits the mandate in the state. "The collision between the state and federal schemes also creates an immediate, actual controversy involving antagonistic assertions of right," Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli writes in the suit.

"The status of being a citizen or resident of the Commonwealth of Virginia is not a channel of interstate commerce; nor a person or thing in interstate commerce; nor is it an activity arising out of or connected with a commercial transaction. Instead, the status arises from an absence of commerce, not from some sort of economic endeavor, and it is not even a non-economic activity affecting interstate commerce. It is entirely passive," the suit reads. "While the United States Supreme Court has not adopted a categorical rule against aggregating the effects of any non-economic activity in order to find Commerce Clause authority, thus far in our history, it has never been held that the Commerce Clause, even when aided by the Necessary and Proper Clause, can be used to require citizens to buy goods or services."

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I like the part about the "absence of commerce." It might be possible for the US Supreme Court to take direct jurisdiction, but I doubt they will. The District Court should have some fun with this case though. It will be interesting to see where the consolidated cases wind up. Virginia may have a leg up in that regard.