Florida Judge Orders Stay of His Decision Finding Affordable Care Act Invalid

A little over a month after declaring the entire health care reform law unlawful, Florida District Court Judge Roger Vinson has clarified that his decision effectively blocks all enforcement of the Affordable Care Act, but issued an order granting a stay (pdf) of this judgment pending appeal. The stay is contingent upon the defendants’ filing of a notice of appeal with the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals or the Supreme Court within seven days. Although at least one other federal court judge has found that the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate provisions are unconstitutional, Judge Vinson took his ruling one step further by finding that because those provisions are not severable from the rest of the Act, the entire law is invalid. Today’s clarification and stay were at the behest of a motion (pdf) filed by the Obama Administration to explain that his declaratory judgment that the entire Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional does not relieve the parties of their rights and obligations under the new law while the case is being appealed.

In his Order granting the stay, Judge Vinson writes:

As I wrote about two weeks after this litigation was filed: “the citizens of this country have an interest in having this case resolved as soon as practically possible” . . . That was nearly eleven months ago. In the time since, the battle lines have been drawn, the relevant case law marshaled, and the legal arguments refined. Almost everyone agrees that the Constitutionality of the Act is an issue that will ultimately have to be decided by the Supreme Court of the United States. It is very important to everyone in this country that this case move forward.

Of the five federal courts that have examined the legality of the individual mandate to date, three – in Virginia, Michigan, and Washington, D.C. – have found that Congress acted within its power to enact the Affordable Care Act, and thus have deemed the law valid. All of these courts have recognized, however, that the Supreme Court will need to ultimately weigh in on the Act’s constitutionality.

This entry was written by Ilyse Schuman.

Photo credit: NobbyZ