Moments ago, in a 2-1 decision, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the individual mandate in the Affordable Care Act, ruling that Congress cannot “mandate that individuals enter into contracts with private insurance companies for the purchase of an expensive product from the time they are born until the time they die.” The court kept the rest of the law enact. Some highlights from the decision:

– It is immaterial whether we perceive Congress to be regulating inactivity or a financial decision to forego insurance. Under any framing, the regulated conduct is defined by the absence of both commerce or even the “the production, distribution, and consumption of commodities”—the broad definition of economics in Raich… To connect this conduct to interstate commerce would require a “but-for causal chain” that the Supreme Court has rejected, as it would allow Congress to regulate anything.

– In sum, the individual mandate is breathtaking in its expansive scope. It regulates those who have not entered the health care market at all. It regulates those who have entered the health care market, but have not entered the insurance market (and have no intention of doing so). It is over inclusive in when it regulates:it conflates those who presently consume health care with those who will not consume health care for many years into the future. The government’s position amounts to an argument that the mere fact of an individual’s existence substantially affects interstate commerce, and therefore Congress may regulate them at every point of their life.

The decision represents the first time a Democratic appointee — Judge Frank Hull — “voted to strike down the mandate“; Stanley Marcus, a judge nominated by President Ronald Reagan, wrote the dissent in the case. The case was brought by 26 states who challenged both the mandate and the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion provision.

Previously, a federal appeals court in Cincinnati had upheld the mandate.

Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) explained why he had turned away millions of dollars in federal grants from the Affordable Care Act, during an appearance on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal this morning, arguing that the federal dollars were committing the state to implement an unconstitutional law and then spend its on dollars once the funding expired:

SCOTT: What we haven’t accepted are dollars from the federal government that implement the ObamaCare, the Affordable Care Act…they gave us stimulus money and then they stopped and we have to keep those programs going…so what we have to do is, we have to look at those grants and ask, alright how long is the grant for, is it something that fits in with what we’re trying to do?

Watch it:

The partial list of the rejected grants can be found here, and it’s as troubling as Scott’s argument, which we can consider in turn. First, constitutionality of legislation is decided by the courts, not governors. As the leader of a state with the second highest uninsurance rate in the country and a $3.7 billion budget hole, Scott should be focused on ways to improve access to care and preserve critical health services within existing law. The money he’s turned down would have not only plugged some of the gaps in the state budget, but it would have also invested in Florida’s health care system, reduced the number of Floridians who lack coverage, eased the strain on state safety net providers who take care of the uninsured and lowered state spending on uncompensated care. Scott can consult with Mitt Romney on the advantages of financing that kind of reform with federal dollars and the two former businessmen can agree that the state — like any business — can invest money upfront to reap savings in the future.

Fortunately, recent reports have indicated Scott is moving in that direction and may ask the legislature to accept several million of dollars in grants that it has rejected. Asked about that possibility this morning, the governor demurred:

During last night’s GOP presidential debate in Ames, Iowa, Mitt Romney (R) distinguished his signature 2006 health care reform law from the Affordable Care Act by arguing that as governor, he offered a “state solution” to a “state problem,” while President Obama’s Affordable Care Act imposed a one-size-fits all system on all 50 states. “We put a plan together that was right for Massachusetts,” Romney explained, “the president took the power of the people and the states away from them.”

But minutes later, he used the exact opposite argument to oppose same-sex marriage. When asked if states should have the right to enact marriage equality legislation, Romney responded that they should not, insisting that “marriage should be decided on the federal level” through a constitutional amendment that would deny gay and lesbian people the right to wed or raise children:

ROMNEY: You might wonder, why is that? Why wouldn’t you just let each state make their own decision? And the reason is, people move from state to state of course in a society like ours. They have children as they go to different states, if one state recognizes the marriage and the other does not, what’s the right of that child? What kind of divorce potential proceeding would there be in a state that didn’t recognize the marriage in the first place?

Watch it:

Romney’s rationale for a single, national definition of marriage could also apply to America’s fractured health care system, in which individuals become uninsured if they lose their jobs, move to a state in which their insurer does not operate or one in which they would no longer qualify for health care assistance. As a result, health care costs are shifted throughout the system — from state to state, ultimately increasing federal spending. In 2006, Romney himself recognized this inefficiency and repeatedly suggested that the federal government could adopt Massachusetts’ plan as a model for reforming the national system.

And so Romney is a tenther of convenience. In trying to obscure the fact that the Affordable Care Act was largely modeled off of his health care proposal, Romney berates a president for forcing states to conform to a single national law and argues that they should be free to enact their own reforms. But should a state like New York or Vermont or Massachusetts pass a marriage law with which Romney disagrees, he demands that it conform to his views of marriage and proposes a constitutional amendment that would overturn “the power of the people and the states.”