Jersey Shore Tea Party files pro se complaint against feds re healthcare

Two members of the Jersey Shore Tea Party have filed their own complaint seeking to have the massive healthcare reform law declared unconstitutional, Art Gallagher of More Monmouth Musings announced today.

The complaint, by Jersey Shore Tea Party members Nicholas E. Purpura and Donald R. Laster, Jr., both acting in pro se, names the Secretaries of Health and Human Services, the Treasury, and Labor as defendants, along with the respective departments that they head. The Jersey Shore Tea Party site states that they filed their action on September 20, or eight days ago. Gallagher reported today that Ocean County Citizens for Freedom and the Colts Neck Tea Party are also involved. The two plaintiffs filed their action in the US District Court in Trenton.

The complaint alleges that the healthcare-reform bill, formally known as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (HR 3590), is unconstitutional on fifteen counts. It also says that the current lawsuit by at least 14 attorneys general (Case 3:10-cv-91) does not address all the ways in which the bill is unconstitutional, and asks the courts to hear the citizens' action and the attorneys-general's action together.

The counts in the Jersey Shore action are that the Act:

1. Violates I.7.1 of the Constitution, in that the bill is actually a Senate bill inserted into the "shell" of a totally unrelated bill in order to preserve the fiction that a measure for raising revenue had originated in the House of Representatives when it had not. Specifically, HR 3590 originally was the Service Members' Home Ownership Tax Act of 2009, until the Senate threw out all its contents, substituted their own version of healthcare reform, and changed the name of the statute to "Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act."
2. Violates I.8.3 (the Commerce Clause) by exceeding Congressional authority under that clause. The "individual health insurance mandate" is the violative part at issue.
3. Violates I.8.12, 14-16 (relating to raising armies, calling up the militia, etc.) by authorizing a "Presidential Health Emergency Army" as an institution that makes doctors subject to military discipline and a draft.
4. Violates I.9.4 by levying, in effect, a capitation tax (the penalty for not buying health insurance) without apportionment among the States.
5. Violates I.9.5-6 (relating to taxes on individual State exports) by its direct tax on medical devices.
6. Violates II.1.5 (relating to Presidential eligibility), in that President Barack Obama is a dual citizen of the USA and Kenya and therefore cannot be said to be a natural-born citizen of the United States within the meaning of that provision. This incorporates the same point that Lawyer Orly Taitz and others have been making on that very issue.
7. Violates Amendment XVI by taxing income twice, or taxing nonexistent "income," which exceeds Congressional authority under that Amendment.
8. Violates Amendment IV by making all patients' medical records, as part of the Electronic Medical Record project, accessible for any reason to certain government officials, a policy that constitutes unreasonable and warrantless search and seizure.
9. Violates Amendments V and XIII by depriving individuals of property without due process of law and, in effect, making "involuntary servants" of citizens through the individual insurance mandate.
10. Violates Amendment XIV, in that the individual insurance mandate denies the equal protection of the laws and in some cases violates individual religious scruples.
11. Violates Amendment I by specifically and by name exempting some religions (Islam, Amish/Mennonite) from the individual mandate, but not others.
12. Violates the body of anti-trust law and, by extension, Amendment V by creating a federal monopoly, engaging in price-fixing, and thus unlawfully "taking" from citizens "without just compensation."
13. Violates Title VII and, by extension, Amendment XIV in that some provisions constitute "reverse discrimination." Specifically: "the bill allocates $2.25 billion in federal funding to historically black and minority serving colleges" and also taxes "tanning salons," a type of service that only a light-skinned person would have any reason to patronize.
14. Violates Article VI, specifically the "oath to support the Constitution," by enjoining State legislatures to accept certain provisions of federal law that violate the Constitution.
15. Violates Amendment X, the Reserved Powers Amendment, by exceeding the enumerated powers (I.8) and thereby usurping powers that are "reserved to the States, or to the people."

At least one legal expert has expressed doubt that the action would stand because the plaintiffs might not have sufficient standing to sue. That expert declined to give a definite opinion on that point, until he had had time to review the complaint.

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