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States' rights advocates seek to keep out federal health care plan
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They call them "tenthers," politicians and activists who insist that the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution means that their state governments can opt out of federal laws and legal policy with which they may not agree.
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
- Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States
Last Thursday, Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R-MN) told those who phoned into a tele-town hall with the Republican Governors Association that "asserting the tenth amendment may be a viable option" in opting out of any federal health care plan, Politico reported last week.
Saturday, Sept. 12,2009, during a rally against the president's
health care plan. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
Pawlenty echoed calls in as many as a dozen states calling for legislation or state constitutional amendments that would keep health care policy decisions in state hands. Arizona lawmakers already have a measure on the 2010 ballot that would be what the proposal's opponents say is "a preemptive attack on health-care reform," according to a May, 2009, report in the Arizona Republic.
In the beginning of this month, Georgia State Senator Judon Hill (R) announced that he would put a proposal in front of the state legislature's upcoming session that would "prohibit any government from punishing an individual or business that does not participate in [federally mandated] health plans. Passage of this Amendment is the best way to protect Georgians from the Democrat led Congress’ attempt to socialize healthcare through their ‘public option’ health care mandate,” Hill said in a statement to the Georgia Senater Press Office. Hill and other members of the Georgia Legislature's Republican Caucus call their measure the Health Care States Rights Protection Constitutional Amendment.
AP reports that other states taking - or are considering taking - a states' rights stance against federally mandated, health care reform, include Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, Florida, Kansas and Louisiana. Similar measures have failed to make it through state legislatures in Wyoming, North Dakota, New Mexico and West Virginia. Indiana sent a "nonbinding message urging protections of individual health care freedoms" to the nation's capital, the AP report said.
Constitutional experts say they believe that whatever state legislatures pass will be superseded by federal law, because the Commerce Clause of the US Constitution gives the federal government to "regulate commerce...among the several states."
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