A variety of legal groups from across the country are backing Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli’s lawsuit to overturn new federal health care regulations that President Obama and Congress put in place earlier this year.
The groups filed legal briefs in support of Cuccinelli ahead of a scheduled hearing in U.S. District Court in Virginia later this month. Cuccinelli is arguing that the federal government can not require Virginians to buy health insurance as part of the health care reforms approved by Obama and the Democratically controlled Congress last March.
Two motions supporting the state’s case came from Western conservative legal groups — the Mountain States Legal Foundation in Colorado and the Pacific Legal Foundation in California — which argue that requiring most Americans to purchase health insurance is unconstitutional.
“There’s no precedent on the books that has even suggested that Congress can do this,” said Luke Wake, a lawyer for the Pacific Legal Foundation.
Briefs were also filed supporting the Justice Department’s argument that the requirement is legal under the interstate commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution, including the Young Invincibles, a grass-roots organization created with support from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.
The group, which advocates for people between the ages of 18 and 34, views the lawsuit as an opportunity, amid all the legal debate, to emphasize the law’s impact on young adults, said co-founder Aaron Smith. One of the provisions in the law that recently took effect allows certain young adults to stay on their parents’ health care plans until they turn 26.
Virginia’s Republican-dominated state legislature, reacting to the federal mandate, passed a law barring the federal government from requiring Virginians to buy insurance. Twenty other states are fighting the new health care reforms in court, though Cuccinelli decided to pursue his case alone.
The Obama administration, arguing that Congress has the authority to require insurance coverage, derided Cuccinelli for his “campaign-style rhetoric,” arguing that Virginia’s “attack” on the health care reforms is political, not legal.
Cuccinelli responded by claiming that the federal government’s case would provide it with “a national police power denied to it by the Constitution.”
A summary judgment hearing is scheduled for Oct. 18. But Stephen Wermiel of American University’s Washington College of Law doesn’t foresee a quick resolution of the case.
“This absolutely will go to the Supreme Court,” he said. “This has the potential to be a long constitutional battle.”
