It seems likely that the Government will ask the 11th Circuit Court to stay the ruling pending an appeal for a reversal of the lower court. This should happen fairly quickly or least there should be an official announcement that it will happen. When it does the 11th Circuit Court will have to rule on the stay request. Until that happens I think discussions of a Constitutional Crisis are a bit premature. Now if Obama doesn’t appeal or if by chance the stay isn’t granted and the Government continues to implement Obamacare then we have grounds for impeachment.
“Until that happens I think discussions of a Constitutional Crisis are a bit premature. Now if Obama doesn’t appeal or if by chance the stay isn’t granted and the Government continues to implement Obamacare then we have grounds for impeachment.”
Politically speaking, yeah. But technically, they’re supposed to stop.
And if they don’t get the ruling on the stay they desire, I’m guessing they won’t comply with it anyway- things will get really interesting if that happens.
I believe strongly that the President is entitled to defy the courts (even the Supreme Court) where he and they interpret his constitutional responsibilities differently. Congress gets to have the final say in an impeachment trial. But Obama and the left are believers in judicial supremacy and their hypocrisy on this point is naked and ugly.
Even if the administration tries to implement Obamacare, Judge Vinson's ruling will be a serious stumbling block. The states (and insurance companies)have no legal obligation to cooperate. They can ignore Obamacare and there's nothing the feds can do about it within the bounds of the law. Unless an appellate court revives it, Obamacare is null, void and without any force or effect. Anyone who wants to can ignore it. If insurers want to bounce 24 year old dependents off of policies they can. Nobody has to pay new federal fees on medical devices or tanning services . . . etc. The feds have no legal basis for enforcing compliance. This is going to bite far deeper than the Dems yet realize.
I'm not a lawyer, but I found this about when it is appropriate to stay a judge's ruling:
In reviewing whether to grant a motion to stay, “a court has broad discretion to stay proceedings before it.” Coast Fed. Bank v. United States, 49 Fed. Cl. 11, 15 (2001). The “power to stay proceedings is incidental to the power inherent in every court to control the disposition of the causes on its docket with economy of time and effort for itself, for counsel, and for litigants.” Landis v. N. Am. Waterwork & Elec. Co., 299 U.S. 248, 254 (1936). In making this determination, a court must exercise its judgment by considering the most orderly course of justice and the interests of the parties, weighing any competing interests. Id. at 255. The orderly course of justice and judicial economy is served when granting a stay simplifies the “issues, proof, and questions of law which could be expected to result from a stay.” CMAX, Inc. v. United States, 300 F.2d 265, 268 (9th Cir. 1962).
I would think that any court would decline to stay the ruling, since a stay would result in continued chaos, while letting the ruling stand as is while on appeal results in the most orderly way forward. In other words, by not issuing a stay, the appeals court would be telling the Obama administration to halt implementation while the case is appealed. Halting implementation is sort of a no-harm, no-foul situation. If, however, implementation is allowed to continue and then Vinson's ruling is upheld on appeal, that would produce chaos as the federal government would then have to try to reverse everything that had been done up to that point. The longer the appeal takes, the more chaotic the result.
Any reasonable court will have to see it that way.