Litigation

VA to Seek Supreme Ruling on Health Care Law

By Peter Hardin

Virginia said Thursday it will ask the Supreme Court to weigh the state’s legal challenge to the federal health care overhaul, bypassing a federal appeals court, for an expedited decision.

“Currently, state governments and private businesses are being forced to expend enormous amounts of resources to prepare to implement a law that, in the end, may be declared unconstitutional,” Virginia Attorney General Kenneth Cuccinelli said, according to a New York Times article.

The Obama administration opposed the plan to bypass the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. It “continues to believe this case should follow the ordinary course of allowing the court of appeals to hear it first,” Justice Department spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler was quoted by the Wall Street Journal as saying.

Not since 2002 has the Supreme Court granted a request such as the one by Cuccinelli, Reuters reported.

A federal judge in Virginia ruled in December that a central provision of the health care law, requiring most Americans to get health insurance by 2014 or face a fine, was unconstitutional. This week, a federal judge in Florida found the provision unconstitutional and went further to declare the entire law invalid. (For detail, see earlier Gavel Grab posts.)

Both of these judges were appointed by Republican presidents. Two judges who have upheld the law’s constitutionality were Democratic appointees. The high profile of the topic — which was President Obama’s signature domestic accomplishment — is heightening discussion about the role of judges, and that is likely to intensify if the Supreme Court takes up the issue.

Meanwhile Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., introduced a resolution asking that the high court rule expeditiously on the constitutionality of the health care overhaul. The Senate defeated a bill to repeal the health care law, and the fight over it has shifted to the courts, a Washington Post article reported.

Also in the Washington Post, Ezra Klein blogged, “Will health care go to the Supreme Court?” Jennifer Rubin responded with a blog post headlined, “Supreme Court justices aren’t bloggers.” Retired U.S. Judge H. Lee Sarokin wrote a commentary for Huffington Post that was given the tongue-in-cheek headline, “Conservatives Enraged Over Judicial Activism Displayed in Health Care Bill Ruling.”

Full post as published by The Gavel on February 03, 2011 (boomark / email).