Scot Turner is a member of the Georgia House of Representatives, representing the 21st District. He was first elected in February 2013 in a special election, taking 60% of the vote over an establishment-backed candidate. Rep. Turner is part of a group of legislators who introduced the Georgia Health Care Freedom and ACA Noncompliance Act, a measure that cleared the legislature in the final days of its recent session. In this guest post, Rep. Turner tells the story behind the legislation, the difficulties they faced, and how Georgia is fighting Obamacare at the state level.
In the summer of 2013, I was part of a team of state representatives that worked together to tackle the problem that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was presenting to Georgia. The federal government had just coopted a prominent Georgia institution, the University of Georgia, to help implement the ACA Navigator program without any debate in the Georgia General Assembly.
As a result, we all felt a certain urgency that something had to be done to draw the line in the sand and stand against the largest federal overreach in modern history.
There was some debate within our group as to whether we should approach it from a stance of full on nullification; the theory that a state has the ability to void federal law. Knowing that even of it did pass the Georgia legislature the likelihood that it would withstand judicial scrutiny was virtual non-existent, we pressed on.