WASHINGTON — The legal battle over the federal health care law shifts to a historic Richmond courthouse Tuesday, in the first appellate hearing on the constitutionality of the Obama-sponsored legislation.
President Obama gets applause after signing the health care bill on March 23, 2010, in the White House.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit will consider two cases testing the sweeping law that requires people to buy health insurance by 2014 or face a tax penalty. In one of those two cases, a trial judge declared that mandate, the linchpin provision of the 2010 health-care law, unconstitutional. In the other case, a judge upheld it.
Competing arguments from the Obama administration and its challengers, which have come into focus as lower courts nationwide have reviewed the law extending insurance to 32 million Americans, will now play out before the highest court to date — one that brings the case closer to its likely destination, the U.S. Supreme Court.
"The fact that the court of appeals will now rule is extremely significant," University of Virginia law professor John Jeffries says. "The upshot of repeated district court (rulings) can only be described as confusion. The court of appeals will focus and narrow the issue" for the Supreme Court.
The 4th Circuit has a record of deciding cases fast, often within a few months of a hearing. It also has a distinctive code of courtesy that will be on display Tuesday in the imposing granite courthouse dating to the 1850s. After each set of oral arguments, the judges descend their bench and shake hands with lawyers for both sides.
Of the 4th Circuit's ambiance, Jeffries, who has argued before that court, added, "The fact that the judges come down off the bench and shake hands and say a personal word enhances the dignity of the proceeding. I might add that it also puts you on your best behavior."
Names of the three panel judges hearing the case will not be revealed until Tuesday morning, shortly before the 9:30 a.m. session. That custom of keeping the judges' names secret until the day of oral arguments is used by only two other U.S. appeals courts.
Patricia Connor, clerk of the 4th Circuit, says the practice reinforces the idea that lawyers present their cases to the court as a whole, not to individual judges. (Lawyers such as Jeffries say it also prevents attorneys from scoping out judges ahead of time and pitching their arguments to particular sensibilities.) Connor said judges are randomly assigned through a computer program.
The 14 judges on the 4th Circuit are essentially half Democratic appointees, half Republican appointees. Party affiliations do not divide neatly in some cases. Chief Judge William Traxler, for example, was first named to a federal trial bench by Republican President George H.W. Bush and then elevated to the 4th Circuit by a Democrat, President Clinton.
Indicative of the stakes to the Obama administration, acting U.S. Solicitor General Neal Katyal, the government's top lawyer before the Supreme Court, will argue the constitutionality of the health care law Tuesday.
In the lawsuit brought by Virginia officials, Virginia v. Sebelius, state Solicitor General Duncan Getchell will argue. In the separate case brought by a Christian college, Liberty University v. Geitner, Mathew Staver will present the case. Each side in each case will have 20 minutes. The Supreme Court last month rejected a request by Virginia officials to take up the dispute immediately rather than wait for appeals court action.
At the heart of Tuesday's cases, and the others heading to appeals courts in other parts of the country, is a test of Congress' power to regulate interstate commerce and whether a person's decision to forgo insurance falls within that sphere.
Obama administration lawyers argue in their brief that, "Millions of people without health insurance have consumed health care services for which they do not pay. These uncompensated costs — totaling $43 billion in 2008 — are shifted to health care providers regularly engaged in interstate commerce."
Administration lawyers stress that people who get medical care without insurance adversely affect the whole interstate market. They say the individual-insurance mandate is essential to the law's goal of providing medical care to all Americans and preventing insurers from denying coverage or raising premiums because of an individual's medical history.
Virginia officials call being uninsured a "passive status" that cannot be regulated as an economic activity under Congress' commerce power. They also contend "the claimed power to order a citizen to purchase a good or service from another citizen has no principled limit."
Lawyers for Liberty University say separately that the school wants to provide health care to its employees on its own terms, consistent with its Christian values, and not be bound by an insurance mandate. They say that the two individuals who have joined Liberty University's challenge, Michele Waddell and Joanne Merrill, are "Christians who believe in living out their sincerely held religious beliefs in everyday life, including in …the lifestyle choices they make, of which managing their health care privately is but one example." The lawyers say the women have decided not to buy health insurance, and rather to take care of their health needs as they arise.
About 125 spectators will fit into the building's primary mahogany-paneled courtroom, on the second floor, for the morning hearings. Connor says extra visitors will be directed to an overflow fourth floor courtroom where the proceedings will be shown on a large screen.
For the first time in its history, the 4th Circuit (which covers Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina and West Virginia, as well as Virginia) will be providing an audio link of the day's arguments on its website: http://www.ca4.uscourts.gov/.
For more information about reprints & permissions, visit our FAQ's. To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor
Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to corrections.usatoday.com.We've updated the Conversation Guidelines. Changes include a brief review of the moderation process and an explanation on how to use the "Report Abuse" button. Read more.
USATODAY.com
This post was made using the
Auto Blogging Software from
WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.
