Yesterday, a federal judge in Florida struck down the new healthcare law as unconstitutional.  Judge Vinson concluded that the law’s cornerstone – a requirement that individuals buy health insurance – exceeded Congress’s power under the Interstate Commerce Clause, and Supreme Court rulings like United States v. Morrison that limit that power to the regulation of “economic activities,” not inactivity like refusals to buy a product.  He struck down the entire law, not just the individual mandate.  He did this for two reasons.  First, the law lacked a severability clause (a clause declaring that any unconstitutional provision should be severed from the law rather than striking down the law as a whole), even though such clauses are typically found in federal laws.  Second, the individual mandate couldn’t logically be severed from the rest of the law, since Congress deemed it essential to the law’s overarching goals, and it was intertwined with the law’s other provisions.

Liberal commentators are up in arms about the decision in Florida v. HHS, to the point of hurling angry falsehoods about it.  Writing in the Washington Post yesterday, Ezra Klein of the liberal Center for American Progress even claimed that the judge admitted his own ruling was wrong: “Vinson concedes that his position is activist in the extreme and a break from the court’s usual preference for limited rulings. . .”