Thread: Supreme Court rejects request to hear Va. health care case

Supreme Court rejects request to hear Va. health care case

By Joan Biskupic, USA TODAY
Updated 41m ago |

WASHINGTON —The Supreme Court rejected a request Monday by Virginia officials to hear the constitutionality of the federal health-care overhaul, ensuring that the legal battle over the Obama-sponsored law will play out first in lower courts.

The high court's resolution of the law that continues to divide congressional Republicans and Democrats would now likely come in mid-2012, rather than the middle of this year.

The high court's order in Virginia v. Sebelius was issued with no recorded vote or public dissent. It would have been highly unusual for the justices to taken up the dispute without at least one lower appeals court ruling first. In the few instances when the justices have intervened early, it has been on a matter of imperative public importance and urgency, such as in the 1974 case involving President Nixon's Watergate tapes.

Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli had urged the justices to step in to resolve conflicting trial court opinions on the constitutionality of the provision that requires, beginning in 2014, that people buy insurance coverage or face a tax penalty.

Lower U.S. district courts have split on whether Congress had the authority to pass the individual-insurance mandate included in the legislation that became law in March 2010. Appeals of those rulings are pending in several U.S. circuit courts of appeals, which is the second step of the three-tier federal judiciary.

The trial judges who ruled against the insurance mandate have said Congress went beyond its power to regulate interstate commerce in the provision. Judges who have upheld the law say the insurance requirement does indeed flow from congressional power to regulate commerce in the states because a decision not to buy health insurance raises costs for everyone an affects commerce.

In Virginia's petition to the court for early review of the matter, Cuccinelli said, "Given the importance of the issues at stake to the states and to the economy as a whole, this court should (accept the case) to resolve a matter of imperative public importance."

Virginia had won in the lower trial court, as U.S. District Court Judge Henry Hudson, appointed by Republican President George W. Bush, had declared the individual mandate unconstitutional. Hudson said opting not to purchase health insurance was not an "economic" activity to be regulated by Congress.

As an example of the conflicting views of lower courts on the matter, another Virginia-based judge, U.S. District Judge Norman Moon, who was appointed by Democratic President Bill Clinton, upheld the provision in a separate case, Liberty University v. Geithner. Moon said Congress has broad power to regulate local matters that affect the economy, "even where the regulated individuals claim not to participate in interstate commerce."

All nine justices apparently participated in the Monday's case.

Neither Virginia nor the Obama administration, nor any outside group that filed a "friend of the court" brief, had asked a justice to recuse in this particular case. But 90 House Democrats have sent a letter to Justice Clarence Thomas asking him to sit out any dispute over the health-care law because his wife, Virginia, a conservative activist, has publicly opposed it.

Separately, Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, suggested on Fox News in early February that Justice Elena Kagan should not participate because she was U.S. solicitor general, working for the Obama administration, when the health-care legislation was developed.

Thomas and Kagan have not publicly commented on the recusal question since the health-care law was challenged in the courts. In summer 2010 during her confirmation hearings, Kagan told the Senate Judiciary Committee that she did not express an opinion on the merits of the health-care legislation. She said she "attended at least one meeting where the existence of the legislation was briefly mentioned, but none where any substantive discussion of the litigation occurred."

In upcoming weeks, three lower appeals courts will be holding hearings on the health-care law, beginning with the Richmond-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit on May 10. A ruling by an appeals court could be handed down later this year and then appealed to the Supreme Court for its next annual term, which begins next October and would run until summer 2012.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington ... h-care.htm

Here's a comment from Cato.

Supreme Court Denies Expedited Obamacare Review

Posted by Ilya Shapiro

That the Supreme Court declined to take up the Obamacare litigation before even a single appellate court had ruled on it is neither surprising nor game-changing.

Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli’s cert petition, whatever its merits (which were several), was a long-shot to begin with as a matter of practice and procedure. Cato, like all other interested parties, has continued filing briefs in and commenting on the various cases on appeal around the country.

The only noteworthy point here is that Justice Elena Kagan apparently participated in the consideration of the petition, which indicates that she won’t be recused when one of these cases does hit the Court. This too isn’t terribly surprising: I’m still digging through the documents regarding her involvement (or lack thereof) in discussions about the litigation when she was solicitor general, but there does not as yet seem to be a “smoking gunâ€