Koster's argument

Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster filed a document last week supporting a lawsuit put forward by Florida and 25 other states arguing the constitutionality of the president's federal health care law.

Koster, a Democrat, says he supports an expansion of health care coverage, but in light of Missouri voters' support for Proposition C, a measure passed by 71 percent last August barring the government from mandating health insurance coverage, he believed the legal challenge against the mandate was necessary.

Koster also said the mandate surpasses what courts have previously determined to be the legislative branch's authority in regulating interstate commerce under the U.S. Constitution. He compared the federal law's penalties in his brief to a Missouri farmer being penalized for deciding not to plant wheat or Congress penalizing an individual for not receiving an annual prostate exam.

Koster's argument comes nine months after Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder filed a Missouri specific case against the law last July. Kinder's two briefs filed await a federal judge's ruling.

The health care law has been a divisive issue from the beginning, with legal scholars and even federal judges expressing a difference of opinion on the law's constitutionality. And while it is curious that Attorney General Koster chose to file with the Florida case and not Missouri's, we commend him for making an effort to represent the wishes of the state's voters.