Federal Judge in Florida Rules Health Care Law is Unconstitutional

(NewsCore) - A Florida federal judge ruled Monday, in a 26-state challenge to President Barack Obama's national health care law, that the provision requiring individuals to purchase health insurance by 2014 or suffer a penalty is unconstitutional.

US District Court Judge Roger Vinson further declared the entire law is invalid because the individual mandate cannot be “severed” from the rest of the legislation. Therefore, since the individual mandate is unconstitutional, he said, the entire law must be considered a violation of the US Constitution.

Vinson compared the law to a defective watch, in an attempt to explain why he ruled the entire law must be declared invalid, with one bad piece so intertwined with the rest that it makes the rest of the watch incapable of functioning.

“It has approximately 450 separate pieces, but one essential piece (the individual mandate) is defective and must be removed,” wrote Vinson. “There are simply too many moving parts in the Act and too many provisions dependent (directly and indirectly) on the individual mandate.”

Vinson’s decision evens the score between the four rulings on the individual mandate that have been handed down to date. It was previously upheld in rulings by federal judges in Michigan and Virginia while a second federal judge in Virginia declared it to be unlawful.

But given the size and the scope of this case, which involved more than half the states in the country, this case has been more closely watched than many of the more than 20 cases filed against the national health care law in federal courts around the country.

Although the lawyers for the US Department of Justice have been largely mum about this case, they are expected to appeal Vinson's ruling. It is also expected to seek an immediate stay while the government takes its case to the federal appeals court.

Ultimately, this case is expected to wind up in the US Supreme Court.