Florida Lawsuit Against Federal Government

The entire text of the lawsuit is here.

My favorite parts:

The Act represents an unprecedented encroachment on the liberty of individuals living in the Plaintiffs’ respective states, by mandating that all citizens and legal residents of the United States have qualifying healthcare coverage or pay a tax penalty. The Constitution nowhere authorizes the United States to mandate, either directly or under threat of penalty, that all citizens and legal residents have qualifying healthcare coverage. By imposing such a mandate, the Act exceeds the powers of the United States under Article I of the Constitution and violates the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution.

......The Act also represents an unprecedented encroachment on the sovereignty of the states. For example, it requires that Florida vastly broaden its Medicaid eligibility standards to accommodate upwards of 50 percent more enrollees, many of whom must enroll or face a tax penalty under the Act, and imposes onerous new operating rules that Florida must follow. The Act requires Florida to spend billions of additional dollars, and shifts substantial administrative costs to Florida for, inter alia, hiring and training new employees, as well as requiring that new and existing employees devote a considerable portion of their time to implementing the Act. This onerous encroachment occurs at a time when Florida faces having to make severe budget cuts to offset shortfalls in its already-strained budget, which the state constitution requires to be balanced each fiscal year (unlike the federal budget), and at a time when Florida’s Medicaid program already consumes more than a quarter of the State’s financial outlays. Plaintiffs cannot effectively withdraw from participating in Medicaid, because Medicaid has, over the more than four decades of its existence, become customary and necessary for citizens throughout the United States, including the Plaintiffs’ respective states; and because individual enrollment in Plaintiffs’ respective Medicaid programs, which presently cover tens of millions of residents, can only be accomplished by their continued participation in Medicaid.

Further, the Act converts what had been a voluntary federal-state partnership into a compulsory top-down federal program in which the discretion of the Plaintiffs and their sister states is removed, in derogation of the core constitutional principle of federalism upon which this Nation was founded. In so doing, the Act exceeds the powers of the United States and violates the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution.

.........The Act is directed to a lack of or failure to engage in activity that is driven by the choices of individual Americans. Such inactivity by its nature cannot be deemed to be in commerce or to have any substantial effect on commerce, whether interstate or otherwise. As a result, the Act cannot be upheld under the Commerce Clause, Const. art. I, § 8. The Act infringes upon Plaintiffs’ interests in protecting the freedom, public health, and welfare of their citizens and their state fiscs, by coercing many persons to enroll in Medicaid at a substantial cost to Plaintiffs; and denies Plaintiffs their sovereign ability to confer rights upon their citizens and residents to make healthcare decisions without government interference, including the decision not to participate in any healthcare insurance program or scheme, in violation of the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.