The Act's mandate that all citizens and legal residents of the United States maintain qualifying healthcare coverage or pay a penalty (the individual mandate) is an unprecedented attempt to expand federal power that would encroach on the sovereignty of the State of Kansas and on the rights of our citizens. Our belief is that this expansion of federal power exceeds the authority granted to the federal government by the United States Constitution.

Last month, a judge for the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia [official website] ruled [opinion, PDF; JURIST report] that the minimum coverage provision of the law is unconstitutional. Also in December, federal judges in Virginia and New Jersey [JURIST reports] dismissed lawsuits challenging the health care law's constitutionality. In November, the US Supreme Court [official website, JURIST news archive] declined to hear [JURIST report] the first preliminary challenge to the law. In October, a federal judge in Michigan ruled [order, PDF; JURIST report] that the law is constitutional under the Commerce Clause [text] as it addresses the economic effects of health care decisions, and that it does not represent an unconstitutional direct tax. Florida's lawsuit, filed in March and joined by 20 states [JURIST reports] and the National Federation of Independent Businesses (NFIB) [association website; JURIST report], seeks injunctive and declaratory relief against what it alleges are violations of Article I and the Tenth Amendment [texts] of the Constitution, committed by levying a tax without regard to census data, property or profession, and for invading the sovereignty of the states.