Legal challenges to Obama’s healthcare reform

In his rul­ing Monday, U.S. Dis­trict Judge Ro­ger Vin­son said he had no choice but to in­val­id­ate Pres­id­ent Obama’s health­care over­haul.

“The ex­ist­ing prob­lems in our na­tion­al health care sys­tem are re­cog­nized by every­one in this case,” Vin­son wrote in the 78-page rul­ing. “Re­gard­less of how laud­able its at­tempts may have been to ac­com­plish these goals in passing the Act, Con­gress must op­er­ate with­in the bounds es­tab­lished by the Con­sti­tu­tion. … I must re­luct­antly con­clude that Con­gress ex­ceeded the bounds of its au­thor­ity in passing the Act with the in­di­vidu­al man­date.”

Vin­son’s widely an­ti­cip­ated de­cision goes bey­ond a sep­ar­ate rul­ing by a fed­er­al judge in Vir­gin­ia who last year ruled only that the in­sur­ance man­date is un­con­sti­tu­tion­al.

Read the story: Judge rules Obama health­care law un­con­sti­tu­tion­al

— Noam N. Levey and David G. Savage