Bill McCollum and Pam Bondi Fire Latest Shot in Legal Challenge to Obamacare

Attorney General Bill McCollum announced on Tuesday morning that he filed a motion late Monday night in response to the U.S. Department of Justices motion for summary judgment on the constitutional challenge filed against new federal health-care laws. Incoming Attorney General Pam Bondi, who joined in the announcement, has pledged to continue the case.

To sustain the act, defendants ask the court to rewrite the Constitution and fundamentally alter the relationships between the federal government and the states and between the federal government and the American people, wrote McCollum on behalf of the states that have joined Florida and the National Federation of Independent Business. Never before has Congress purported to use its power over interstate commerce to compel activity, rather than to regulate existing economic activity.

McCollum and his team rejected the Department of Justices suggestion that states can leave Medicaid if the costs prove too cumbersome.

The ACA further violates the Constitution by coercing the states participation in its new Medicaid regime and by commandeering their resources to achieve the federal governments ends, insisted McCollum and the other plaintiffs. Defendants ask the court to believe that Medicaid remains purely voluntary, and that any state may simply withdraw to avoid the new costs and burdens. However, there is no mechanism under law for such a withdrawal much less for an orderly transition that would not jeopardize the health and lives of the millions of poor and needy who depend on the states Medicaid programs.

The ACAs architecture inherently depends on the states remaining in Medicaid, added the plaintiffs.