14 states sue to block health care law

On AOL, this was a leading story.

..."Thirteen of the states, led by Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum (pictured), filed a joint federal lawsuit Monday in Pensacola, where they called the new Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act an "unprecedented encroachment on the sovereignty of states," CNN reports. McCollum and 12 other attorneys general involved are Republicans; Buddy Caldwell of Louisiana is the lone Democrat.

Nowhere in the U.S. Constitution, the state legal officers assert, is there a mandate requiring citizens to have health coverage. The new law, which offers subsidies to help low-income people buy insurance, imposes financial penalties on those who do not comply by 2014.

Lawsuits challenging federal authority often rely on the "commerce clause" of the U.S. Constitution, which states that "powers not delegated" to the federal government by the Constitution are "reserved to the states respectively." But efforts by states to circumvent federal laws are often trumped by the Constitution's "supremacy clause": laws passed by the Congress "shall be the supreme law of the land."

This is what I'm talking about.

The original CNN article is here.