The U.S. Supreme Court said Monday it will take up a legal challenge to President Obama’s sweeping healthcare reforms next year, ensuring that a decision would be rendered in the middle of Obama’s re-election campaign.
At stake is Obama’s signature domestic achievement, the Affordable Care Act, although the political ramifications are just as important for Democratic and Republican lawmakers facing re-election in 2012. Oral arguments are scheduled for March and will last five and a half hours. A decision is expected before the court adjourns in June.
Twenty-six states and a handful of private groups signed on to a Florida case questioning the constitutionality of Obama’s healthcare law. The central question the court must answer is whether Congress overstepped its authority by mandating that individuals purchase health insurance by 2014.
The law is intended to provide 30 million uninsured Americans with health care. Some of the more popular components of the legislation, like allowing parents to keep children on their insurance plans until they reach 26 years of age, are already in place. But the bulk of the more contested provisions go into affect in the coming years.
The high court will pick up the case from an appeals court in Atlanta that previously ruled the all-important mandate was unconstitutional, but left the rest of the law intact. For now, the Supreme Court has not decided if it will take up a similar case filed by Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli.
Justice Stephen Breyer, a court moderate appointed by President Bill Clinton, could be the deciding vote on a court usually split between four conservatives and four liberals. Obama’s administration expressed certainty the nine justices will uphold the law.
“We know the Affordable Care Act is constitutional and are confident the Supreme Court will agree,” White House spokesman Dan Pfeiffer said in a statement.
Republicans who vehemently objected to the law and worked to reverse it are anxiously awaiting definitive court action.
“Throughout the debate, Senate Republicans have argued that this misguided law represents an unprecedented and unconstitutional expansion of the federal government into the daily lives of every American,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said.
The Supreme Court will decide Nov. 22 whether to take up Virginia’s challenge to the law, a spokeswoman for Cuccinelli said. Virginia’s case also challenges the constitutionality of requiring Americans to buy insurance, but it also raises the issue of whether the federal law would trump a new state law that says no one can be forced to buy insurance.
A federal judge initially backed Cuccinelli, but the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Virginia didn’t have standing to sue to the federal government.
The Supreme Court could take up Virginia’s case separately or join it to the Florida case or it could allow the appellate court ruling to stand, effectively ending Virginia’s lawsuit.
“I do think this question of when states have standing, that’s an issue that has importance beyond this case and obviously state governments do have an interest. So that might be a reason for Virginia to pursue its case,” said Ilya Somin, law professor at George Mason University.
Cuccinelli’s office had no comment on Monday’s decision, but Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell said in a statement it “is reassuring news that we will soon reach finality on this critically important issue.”
