The St. Louis Business Journal reports:

Voters overwhelmingly approved Proposition C at Tuesday’s election, but it will likely be overturned in court, law and health-care experts say.

Proposition C creates a law banning the government from forcing Missourians to buy health insurance under the federal health-care overhaul [HR 3590] starting in 2014.

“The Constitution clearly states that a federal law trumps a state law when they come into direct conflict,” said Richard Reuben, a professor at the University of Missouri School of Law in Columbia. “The core of Proposition C, which is the opt-out provision, appears to be in direct conflict with the new federal statute.”

Constitutional scholar Randy Barnett agrees. Here’s Barnett on the Fox Business Channel’s Freedom Watch commenting on Thomas Woods’ new book, Nullification:

(Original video on YouTube, full segment, chopped version)

Barnett concludes a blog post on the States’ ability to nullify federal law:

Political activists should not waste their precious energies on sketchy constitutional theories such as the assertion of a state power to nullify unconstitutional laws that, for better or worse, have long been rejected by the Supreme Court–as Wisconsin’s was in Ableman v. Booth–that five justices certainly would not today support, and that rest on dubious claims about original meaning.