Idaho GOP gets ready to nullify health care reform


Lawmakers in six other states - Maine, Montana, Oregon, Nebraska, Texas and Wyoming - are also mulling "nullification" bills, which contend states, not the U.S. Supreme Court, are the ultimate arbiter of when Congress and the president run amok.

It's a concept that's won favor among many tea party adherents who believe Washington, D.C., is out of control.

Though a 1958 U.S. Supreme Court decision reaffirmed that federal laws "shall be the supreme law of the land," Gov. C.L. "Butch" Otter is promoting the idea, too. In his January 10 State of the State speech, he told Idaho residents "we are actively exploring all our options - including nullification."


But Otter beat him to the punch.


Sick of just passing largely symbolic resolutions decrying federal encroachment on states' rights, proponents like Pearce say their bills will ratchet up the pressure on the feds: This isn't just some piece of paper to wave about; if it passes - and there's plenty in Idaho to suggest it will - this would become the law of the state, Pearce says.

It's been tried before, a long time ago.

Back in 1799, Thomas Jefferson wrote in his "Kentucky Resolution," a response to federal laws passed amid an undeclared naval war against France, that "nullification, by those sovereignties, of all unauthorized acts... is the rightful remedy."

Three decades later, South Carolina Sen. John Calhoun pushed nullification of federal tariffs that many in the South deemed discriminatory toward agricultural slave states. President Andrew Jackson readied the military, before a compromise defused the situation.

In 1854, Wisconsin also sought to nullify the federal Fugitive Slave Act that forced non-slave states to return escapees.

And more recently, Arkansas defied the federal government's order to desegregate public schools after the landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision.

In a unanimous 1958 ruling rejecting Arkansas' position, the High Court wrote that states were bound by the Constitution's Article VI mandating U.S. laws, when vetted by justices, "shall be the supreme law of the land."

After passing its "Health Care Freedom Act" last year, Idaho is already among 27 states now suing the federal government over the constitutionality of what health-care overhaul foes deride as "Obamacare."

Supreme Court justices haven't yet weighed in on questions like whether residents can be compelled to buy health insurance.

But Thomas E. Woods, Jr., author of the 2010 book "Nullification" that Otter and Pearce have in their Idaho Capitol offices, argues states have the final say on the gravest issues, like when the government forces citizens to spend their hard-earned money.


