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Healthcare Reform Battle Continues in the Courts
President Obama just got a lucky break in the continuing court battle over the healthcare reform bill.
The Obama administration has lucked out in Virginia. A three-judge panel of U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit will hear arguments Tuesday morning from plaintiffs challenging the constitutionality of the health care reform law Congress passed law last year. And all three of those judges -- selected randomly by computer -- were appointed by Democratic Presidents.
The political composition of the panel is crucial -- thus far, in lower court rulings, judges appointed by Democrats have all upheld the law while Republican-appointed judges have stricken parts, or all of the law on constitutional grounds.
This was by no means a likely outcome. Though the conservative-leaning court has become more liberal since Obama took office, the odds of drawing an all-Dem panel are still quite low -- about 20 percent.
Following a decision by the panel, the losing side can request that the case be reheard by the entire appeals court en banc. Those requests are granted infrequently, in the discretion of the court, but one factor the court considers is the legal significance of the case, and the constitutionality of health care reform is rather significant.
Oral arguments begin as the politics of repealing the law outright have ebbed on Capitol Hill. The top Republican on the powerful House Ways and Means committee has accepted that GOP efforts to repeal the law are "dead" in the current legislative environment. And recently, some of the most powerful Republicans in Washington have acknowledged that the GOP would like to turn Medicare into a program that mimics the health care reform law in key ways.
The panel will hear two suits Tuesday -- one brought by Liberty University, challenging the constitutionality of law's individual and employer mandates, and a second brought by the state of Virginia, challenging the individual mandate on the grounds that it conflicts with state law, and violates state's rights.
Lawyers representing the Obama administration are seeking to have the suits thrown out for lack of standing, or, failing that, dismissed on the grounds that the Constitution's commerce clause gives Congress broad authority to regulate the health insurance market.
A federal appeals panel questioned Wednesday whether a conservative legal center’s challenge to the health law is still valid after the revelation last week that a key plaintiff had already bought health insurance.
The Thomas More Law Center told the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals that it has a right to bring its suit — which it filed with several individuals — challenging the constitutionality of the law’s requirement to buy insurance. The group asked the court to overturn a lower court’s decision to uphold the law.
The three-judge panel divided the arguments into two parts: one to address whether the group has the right to bring the suit — the issue of “standing” — and one to address the merits of the case.
Several legal experts have said the group may no longer have standing now that the key plaintiff, Jann DeMars, told the court last week that she obtained insurance for her child in October. She had argued that the mandate was too much of a financial burden.
The Thomas More Law Center’s lawyer argued that its other plaintiffs still have a right to bring the suit.
“Anyone who is subject to that mandate would have standing to it because it imposes a statutory burden on individuals,” Robert Muise said.
But the government said they were trying to change the rules at the appellate level.
“They had their chance to do this and establish a record,” acting solicitor general Neal Katyal told the panel, according to an audio recording posted by the court. “And therefore, they can’t switch courses essentially at midstream.”
The government argued that if the 6th Circuit rules the case no longer has standing, it should throw it out or at the very least send it back to the lower court.
http://news.yahoo.com/business-group-appeals-health-law-supreme-court-143800340.html