Obamacare Class Action

You may be aware that yesterday the District Court in Virginia declared the individual mandate of Obamacare unconstitutional. The ruling is a major victory, but it leaves MANY issues unresolved. Your continued participation in the OCA lawsuit will help. The most important point for all of us to understand is that this ruling does not overturn Wickard v. Filburn. In other words, this ruling does not return us to proper Constitutional limits on Congressional authority. Most of you probably remember that Wickard v. Filburn is the 1942 Supreme Court case that essentially eliminated Constitutional limits on Congressional authority.

OUR CLASS ACTION LAWSUIT IS STILL NECESSARY
As I have explained before, ours is the ONLY lawsuit that is arguing for the complete overturn of Wickard v. Filburn. The Virginia lawsuit, and all other lawsuits, start by assuming that current Supreme Court precedent is correct. They then argue that Obamacare goes beyond that precedent by grabbing even more power for Congress. While I agree that Obamacare goes further than any previous law in overstepping Constitutional limits, Obamacare is simply the latest step in Congress’ ever-increasing power grab.

I’m very pleased that at least one District Court judge has finally said “enough, no more.” However, he stopped there because that is what the Virginia plaintiffs were asking him to do. They never asked that judge to consider overturning Wickard.

All the Virginia ruling does is stop Congress where it is. But, we are NOT satisfied with the status quo. Congress has been over the line for at least 68 years.

Because our lawsuit is the only one asking for Wickard to be overturned, we must continue to prosecute our case. And that is exactly what we will do.

OTHER INTERESTING ASPECTS OF THE VIRGINIA RULING
You may remember that the Tennessee District Court dismissed our lawsuit based upon its conclusion that we didn’t have standing to sue. (We are re-filing soon, probably in Texas. More on that later this week.) The Tennessee Court’s ruling essentially said that none of you were adversely affected by Obamacare. You read that right. The Absurd ruling from the Tennessee Court was that none of the 30,000 of you were adversely affected by Obamacare.

That ridiculous conclusion was contrary to two other Court’s rulings in Michigan and Virginia. Now we have a third ruling from a third court that demonstrates just how absurdly liberal and politically motivated the Tennessee judge was. Yesterday’s ruling included the following statements: Obamacare “adversely affects everyone” and “touches every American.” Well, there you have it. This is, of course, exactly what we had argued to the Tennessee Court.

As I said in an earlier message, the Tennessee Court’s ruling was infuriating, but he did us a favor. Now we can file in a court that has a judge that might actually follow the Constitution. This put us a little behind in our schedule, but we will make that up. (Again, I’ll write about this in more detail later this week.)

VIRGINIA'S RULING DOESN'T STOP OBAMACARE
You should understand that the Virginia Court’s ruling doesn’t stop any part of Obamacare from being implemented. At least not yet. You see, the Court refused to enjoin the implementation of Obamacare, pending appeal. That means that implementation of Obamacare moves forward until the 4th Circuit Court rules on this decision. That will probably take at least a year.

The Virginia Court also severed the individual mandate from the rest of the Obamacare monstrosity. In other words, the best outcome from the Circuit Court (barring that court doing something very unexpected) would be to eliminate the individual mandate, but leave the rest of the law in place.

As you can see, the Virginia ruling is a victory, but it leaves MUCH still to be done. Our Obamacare Class Action lawsuit takes on these other issues. We are unique. With your continued support we will take back our Constitutional Republic.

In Liberty,
Van Irion
President, Lead Counsel, Co-Founder
Liberty Legal Foundation