In a lawsuit targeting the rule that all Americans buy health insurance, the states have banded together to claim that Congress exceeded its power and tread on states' domain. Other lawsuits, such as those recently argued in appeals courts in Richmond and Cincinnati, were filed by individual entities, for example, a Christian university, the single state of Virginia and a cluster of people who do not want to purchase coverage. Further, the case to be aired Wednesday in Atlanta marks the only one in which a lower-court judge, U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson of Florida, voided the entire health care law after declaring the individual insurance mandate unconstitutional. (His ruling is on hold while appeals are pending.)
The law, signed by President Obama in March 2010, increases the availability of insurance, expands Medicaid, creates insurance exchanges and prohibits insurers from denying coverage to people because of their medical history. At the core of the national litigation is the requirement that most Americans obtain insurance by 2014 or pay a tax penalty. Heightening the drama of the next hearing, the states will be represented by Paul Clement, a high-profile former U.S. solicitor general who is also representing NFL owners in the lockout litigation and the House of Representatives in a challenge to the Defense of Marriage Act. (The Obama administration said earlier this year that it believes the law defining marriage as only between a man and woman is unconstitutional.)
"The importance of the case is inescapable," Clement said of the health care dispute. "You have over half the states united in a single lawsuit arguing that a federal law violates basic principles of federalism," the division of power between states and the federal government. The National Federation of Independent Business, represented by Washington lawyer Michael Carvin, is also part of the challenge to be heard by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit Wednesday. The government's case will be argued, as has been in other appeals courts, by acting U.S. Solicitor General Neal Katyal, the government's top lawyer before the Supreme Court.
He contends Congress properly used its power to regulate interstate commerce when it adopted the insurance requirement. "Regulation of the means of payment for health care services
a multibillion-dollar problem resulting from the failure of millions of uninsured patients to pay the full cost of the health care services they consume
is within Congress's commerce power," Katyal tells the 11th Circuit in his brief. So far, five federal trial judges have ruled on the individual mandate. Three, all of whom happen to be appointees of Democratic presidents, have upheld it. Two, both Republican appointees, have struck it down.
MORE
