http://thinkprogress.org/2011/01/29/virginia-interposition/In response to the landmark Affordable Care Act, numerous right-wing state lawmakers have introduced unconstitutional bills attempting to nullify this federal law. Earlier this week, however, the Virginia House of Delegates (Republican majority) went even further, passing a sweeping nullification bill that directly conflicts with numerous Supreme Court decisions:
All goods produced or manufactured, whether commercially or privately, within the boundaries of the Commonwealth that are held, maintained, or retained within the boundaries of the Commonwealth shall not be deemed to have traveled in interstate commerce and shall not be subject to federal law, federal regulation, or the authority of the Congress of the United States under its constitutional power to regulate commerceThe Virginia Legislature has pulled this stunt before. In 1956, Virginia lawmakers objected to a different Supreme Court decision — Brown v. Board of Education. Rather than acknowledging that they are bound by the Constitution, however, these lawmakers instead enacted a “resolution of interposition” claiming that they were “duty bound” to defy the Supreme Court:
(W)e have watched with growing concern as the power delegated to the Congress to regulate commerce among the several States has been stretched into a power to control local enterprises remote from interstate commerce; we have witnessed with disquietude the advancing tendency to read into a power to lay taxes for the general welfare a power to confiscate the earnings of our people for purposes unrelated to the general welfare as we conceive it . . . .
Virginia can remain silent no longer. Recognizing, as this Assembly does, the prospect of incalculable harm to the public schools of this State and the disruption of the education of her children, Virginia is duty bound to interpose against these most serious consequences, and earnestly to challenge the usurped authority that would inflict them upon her citizens.