BL: Health Care Suits by States ’Unlikely to Succeed,’ Scholars Say
Health-Care Legislation Judged Able to Withstand Constitutional Challenge
By William McQuillen and Andrew Harris
March 24 (Bloomberg) -- Lawsuits by 14 states seeking to scuttle health-care legislation signed by President Barack Obama were given little chance of success in the face of the broad powers granted Congress by the U.S. Constitution, scholars said.
Thirteen states led by Florida said the law signed yesterday illegally places a fiscal burden on their cash- strapped budgets with an expansion of state-run Medicaid. Virginia filed a separate suit contending the “individual mandate” requiring people to buy health insurance exceeds Congress’s powers.
“It’s unlikely to succeed,” said Jack Balkin, a professor at Yale Law School in New Haven, Connecticut, of the effort by the states, equating the new law to Congress’s power to levy taxes. “Congress has the ability to force people to pay taxes. If it is a constitutional tax, then that is the ballgame.”
The $940 billion health care overhaul subsidizes coverage for uninsured Americans, and is financed by Medicare cuts to hospitals and fees or taxes on insurers, drugmakers, medical- device companies and Americans earning more than $200,000 a year. Many of the changes enacted by the bill, such as requiring most people to have health insurance and employers to provide coverage, will take at least two years to go into effect.
The 13 states joining in the lawsuit filed in federal court in Pensacola, Florida, claim that “the act represents an unprecedented encroachment on the liberty of individuals living in the plaintiffs’ respective states, by mandating that all citizens and legal residents of the United States have qualifying health care coverage or pay a tax penalty.”
13 States
Joining Florida in the suit are Alabama, Colorado, Idaho, Louisiana, Michigan, Nebraska, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah and Washington. Along with a separate suit by Virginia filed in federal court in Richmond, the states asked the courts to declare the law unconstitutional and seek to bar its enforcement.
The complaints were filed moments after Obama, a Democrat, signed the legislation, which totals more than 2,400 pages.
“This is a continuation of politics by a national political faction that lost in Congress,” said Aziz Huq, a University of Chicago law professor, who predicted the lawsuits will likely fail.
Twelve of the state attorneys general participating in the Florida case are Republicans. Buddy Caldwell of Louisiana is the lone Democrat. Virginia’s lawsuit was filed by Ken Cuccinelli, a Republican.
The health-care overhaul will allow 16 million more Americans to qualify for Medicaid coverage, according to an estimate by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. It will cost the states billions of dollars to administer, according to the states that sued.
‘Ruin the State’
Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum said at a press conference yesterday that the act’s legislative mandates will cost his state billions of dollars. The legislation “will ruin the state financially,” said McCollum, who predicted the lawsuits would end up before the U.S. Supreme Court.
The states claim the legislation will deprive them of sovereignty and violates the Constitution’s Tenth Amendment, which says powers not granted to the national government are reserved to the states, or the people. In its lawsuit, Virginia specifically attacked the new law’s requirement that Americans obtain health coverage, calling it unconstitutional. Charles Fried, a professor at Harvard Law School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, disagreed.
‘What Virginia Says’
“As long as the federal law is independently constitutional, it doesn’t matter what Virginia says,” said Fried, who served as solicitor general, the government’s chief lawyer before the U.S. Supreme Court, during the administration of President Ronald Reagan. “It’s like Virginia saying we don’t have to pay income tax.”
The Florida lawsuit claims the reform contains “unfunded mandates” and is too financially burdensome at a time when states already need to cut their budgets. The attorneys general also said the law imposes an illegal tax on people “for their failure or refusal to do anything other than to exist and reside in the United States.”
Balkin said throwing out the health care law may require overturning decades of court precedent leading back to the “New Deal” legislation of President Franklin Roosevelt.
Robert Kaufman, a public policy professor at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California, who calls himself a “fervent opponent” of the new health law, said chances are slim that litigation by the states will reverse it.
The Issue
“The issue is whether this is constitutional, not whether this is wise,” said Kaufman, who is also an attorney. U.S. Supreme Court decisions since Roosevelt have tended to support a broad reading of the Constitution in allowing the federal government to regulate interstate commerce, Kaufman said.
The Supreme Court in 2005 cited the Constitution’s Commerce Clause in upholding a federal ban on marijuana, showing the reach of that provision in the face of state laws allowing its use for medical reasons, said Peter Edelman, a constitutional law professor at the Georgetown University in Washington.
“Bottom line, I don’t think there is any substance to any of the arguments,” said Edelman, who was an assistant secretary at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services during the administration of President Bill Clinton. “But you always have to put a small asterisk, given the current membership of the court.”
The cases are State of Florida v. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 10-cv-00091, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida (Pensacola); Commonwealth of Virginia v. Sebelius, 10cv00188, U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia (Richmond).
To contact the reporters on this story: William McQuillen in Washington at bmcquillen@bloomberg.net and; Andrew Harris in Chicago at aharris16@bloomberg.net.
Last Updated: March 24, 2010 00:01 EDT
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