Another judge may reject health-care overhaul

Could President Obama's health-care overhaul be struck down by a second federal judge?

That's a distinct possibility. Roger Vinson, a federal district court judge in Florida, said yesterday it would take "a giant leap" to accept the Obama administration's argument that requiring almost all Americans to buy health care is constitutional, reports the New York Times.

"People have always exercised the freedom to choose whether to buy or not buy a commercial product," Vinson added.

His comments came in a hearing for a lawsuit brought by a coalition of 20 state attorneys general, all but one of them Republican.

Earlier this week, another federal district court judge, Henry Hudson, upheld a similar lawsuit brought by the state of Virginia. Two other legal challenges, however, have been rejected by federal judges. The dispute is widely expected to end up before the Supreme Court. But the high-court justices may be swayed in part by how lower courts have ruled, so these rulings are highly significant.

At issue is the "individual mandate" portion of the law. The constitution's Commerce Clause limits Congress's regulatory power to addressing only issues that affect interstate commerce. The law's opponents argue that requiring people to buy a product doesn't qualify. Its defenders counter, in part, that when people choose to go uninsured, taxpayers end up footing the bill for emergency-room care, so interstate commerce is affected. Both sides cite previous Supreme Court decisions that they say support their argument.

Vinson's comments in court yesterday suggested he could go even further than Hudson in siding with the law's challengers. The health-care law contains numerous parts, and Hudson stopped short of ruling that if the individual mandate is found unconstitutional, the law's other provisions -- expanded access to Medicaid, for instance -- would also have to be thrown out. But Vinson suggested he disagrees, comparing the law to a watch, with interlocking components.

Ominously for the law's supporters, Vinson noted that the law also had "been compared to a Rube Goldberg invention."

(AP Photo/Gretchen Ertl)