Florida high court throws out healthcare ballot question

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That vote was seen as a major blow to the Democrats and the healthcare plan.

 "This decisive vote against a key provision of Obamacare, arguably the cornerstone of the Obama presidency, shows how completely detached the Democrat agenda is from the American electorate, and is another reason why Republicans will win back the majority in November," Michael Steele, chairman of the Republican National Committee, said at that time.

 Florida was one of four states planning to have a state constitutional amendment similar to Missouri's proposition on the November ballot.

Residents of Arizona, Oklahoma and Colorado will still vote on such a measure this election day.

In addition, six states have already passed laws saying the federal government cannot force its residents to buy healthcare insurance. Based on the law passed in Virginia, the state's Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, on March 23, filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court challenging the constitutionality of the federal healthcare bill, claiming it exceeded the federal government's power under the Constitution.

The U.S. Department of Justice sought to have the suit thrown out but, on Aug. 2, a judge ruled that the case can go forward and a hearing is scheduled for October.

"The federal government is forcing citizens to buy health insurance, claiming it has the authority to do so because of its power to regulate interstate commerce via the Constitution's Commerce Clause," Cuccinelli said in a release in May. "We contend that if a person decides not to buy health insurance, that person - by definition - is not engaging in commerce, and should not be subject to a federal mandate.

"Just being alive is not interstate commerce,"

 Cuccinelli continued. "If it were, there would be no limit to the Commerce Clause and to Congress's authority to regulate everything we do.  If Congress has the power to force Americans to buy health insurance, then there's nothing to stop Congress from forcing us to buy any product."

Randy Barnett, professor of Legal Theory at Georgetown University Law School said that the Virginia AG was describing the main Constitutional objection to the Affordable Care Act.

"It is totally unprecedented that the federal government is mandating citizens to enter into a private contract," Barnett said. "People are mandated to renew their driver's licenses and to pay their taxes. But no one is mandated to buy something from a private company."

Barnett said that the 20 attorneys general pushing the suit in federal court in Florida were hoping that a Florida state constitutional amendment rejecting mandated healthcare would strengthen their argument, as the Virginia law appears to strengthen the Virginia AG's case.

"There are other arguments against the healthcare reform, but the mandate to purchase and the prohibitive costs to the states are the ones now being put forward," Barnett said. "No one is saying that federal law does not supersede state law, if the federal law is valid. The states are challenging the Constitutional validity of the federal law."

Barnett added that, just because a mandate may be unprecedented, it does not mean it is necessarily unconstitutional.

"It does mean that, whenever a court renders a final decision on this matter, it will be breaking new ground, no matter which way it decides," Barnett said.

In the Florida Supreme Court case, the two dissenting justices and the Florida Secretary of State did not deny that the ballot language was vague. But they said that the court should simply substitute the text of the entire amendment for the summary.

But the majority of the court rejected that notion. They described the ballot's written text as a "classic examples of a ballot summary 'flying under false colors.' "