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发帖数: 8998 | 1 WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An appeals court ruled Friday that President Barack
Obama's healthcare law requiring Americans to buy healthcare insurance or
face a penalty was unconstitutional, a blow to the White House.
The Appeals Court for the 11th Circuit, based in Atlanta, found that
Congress exceeded its authority by requiring Americans to buy coverage, but
also ruled that the rest of the wide-ranging law could remain in effect.
The legality of the so-called individual mandate, a cornerstone of the 2010
healthcare law, is widely expected to be decided by the Supreme Court. The
Obama administration has defended the provision as constitutional.
The case stems from a challenge by 26 U.S. states which had argued the
individual mandate, set to go into effect in 2014, was unconstitutional
because Congress could not force Americans to buy health insurance or face
the prospect of a penalty.
"This economic mandate represents a wholly novel and potentially unbounded
assertion of congressional authority: the ability to compel Americans to
purchase an expensive health insurance product they have elected not to buy,
and to make them re-purchase that insurance product every month for their
entire lives," a divided three-judge panel said.
Obama and his administration had pressed for the law to help halt the steep
increases in healthcare costs and expand insurance coverage to the more than
30 million Americans who are without it.
It argued that the requirement was legal under the Commerce Clause of the
Constitution. One of the three judges of the appeals court panel, Stanley
Marcus, agreed with the administration in dissenting from the majority
opinion.
The majority "has ignored the undeniable fact that Congress' commerce power
has grown exponentially over the past two centuries and is now generally
accepted as having afforded Congress the authority to create rules
regulating large areas of our national economy," Marcus wrote.
Many other provisions of the healthcare law are already being implemented.
The decision contrasts with one by the U.S. Appeals Court for the 6th
Circuit, based in Cincinnati, which had upheld the individual mandate as
constitutional. That case has already been appealed to the Supreme Court.
The Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, based in Richmond, has yet to rule
on a separate challenge by the state of Virginia.
(Reporting by Jeremy Pelofsky and James Vicini; Editing by Eric Beech) |
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