Federal Judge Gets It Half Right in Striking Down Health Care Law

WASHINGTON, Dec. 13, 2010 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Today, Family Research Council applauds a federal judge in Virginia striking down parts of the newly enacted health care law that includes taxpayer funding of abortion, but adds that this decision doesn't go far enough. 

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Family Research Council's Special Legal Counsel Ken Klukowski made the following comments:

"We applaud Judge Hudson for striking down the individual mandate recognizing that no part of the Constitution empowers the federal government to command American citizens to spend their own personal money to purchase health insurance. 

"However, the judge failed to properly apply the Supreme Court's rulings that under these circumstances he must strike down the entire Obamacare law.  As explained in our brief filed in another Obamacare case, and as we will file in this case as it goes on appeal, the individual mandate is essential to a complex law.   Striking down the mandate requires a court to strike down the entire statute and return the matter entirely to Congress.

"We call on the incoming Congress to quickly move to repeal this unconstitutional law in its entirely not merely to tinker with various provisions.  Such tinkering would likely doom the legal challenges that are the best hope for dooming this fundamentally flawed law that is a high taxing, poorly thought out, and taxpayer funding of abortion monstrosity."

Click here to read a DC Examiner opinion piece by FRC Special Counsel Ken Klukowski explaining why Obamacare's individual mandate cannot be severed to save the rest of the law. http://www.frc.org/op-eds/striking-down-individual-mandate-would-mean-ending-obamacare

Click here to read FRC's brief in the multi-state Obamacare lawsuit in Florida. http://www.frc.org/fl-hhs

SOURCE Family Research Council