Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, a mechanical engineering major, lawyer and former state senator, has ridden his new office — and his lawsuit against the federal government’s health care law — to national prominence, riling critics and firing up conservative supporters in the process.
The state’s lawsuit against the newly enacted health-care reforms, which Cuccinelli filed only minutes after President Obama signed the reforms into law last March, will be argued Monday in front of a Richmond judge who will determine whether to allow the suit to proceed.
The state will argue that a provision of the new law requiring almost all Americans to purchase health insurance is unconstitutional. The federal government maintains that it is acting legally under the commerce clause of the Constitution.
Virginia’s lawsuit is separate from one filed jointly by 20 other states against the health care reforms in a Florida court. A judge ruled last week that that lawsuit can proceed.
Cuccinelli filed his own lawsuit because, unlike the other states, the Virginia legislature passed a law specifying that state residents can’t be forced to buy insurance.
In an interview with The Washington Examiner, Cuccinelli reached back to the 18th century to make his case, noting that England’s King George III concluded that the British subjects living in America could not be forced to buy British goods.
“The notion that the Congress and the president can exercise a power that King George III and the Parliament acknowledged they could not makes this historically outrageous,” Cuccinelli said of the health care law. “It points out just what an overreach of federal power this is and why it’s unconstitutional.”
Del. Bob Marshall, R-Prince William, backs Cuccinelli’s efforts to derail the federal requirement that would penalize people who don’t buy insurance.
“The problem here is this bizarre contrivance that if you’re doing nothing, doing nothing has an effect on interstate commerce somehow,” Marshall said.
The lawsuit over health care reforms is just the latest example of Cuccinelli’s unusual conservative activism since being elected attorney general last year. Few, if any, of Cuccinelli’s predecessors took on such blatantly ideological causes, mainly because many of them saw the job as a steppingstone to higher office.
Cuccinelli, who said he plans to run for re-election at this point, has also sued the Environmental Protection Agency over carbon emissions and demanded that the University of Virginia turn over documents related to a climatologist’s work on global warming. The university is resisting Cuccinelli’s efforts, and critics have railed against Cuccinelli for overstepping his authority. Cuccinelli’s response? “Don’t forget to vote [for someone else] in the next election,” he said.
State Sen. Dave Marsden, D-Fairfax, who won a special election this year to fill Cuccinelli’s state Senate seat, said that while he doesn’t agree with some of Cuccinelli’s actions, they haven’t surprised him.
“He tells you who he is, and what he wants to do, and what he cares about,” Marsden said. “So there’s never any surprise. Is it ill-advised at times? Yes. But he gives you plenty of warning.”
Fla. health care suit
» U.S. District Judge Robert Vinson allowed parts of the lawsuit brought against the Obama administration health care reforms to proceed.
» Arguments will focus on elements of the law that penalize people for not buying insurance and force states to expand their Medicaid rolls.
“I am especially pleased that the judge found the federal government’s use of the commerce clause to justify the individual health insurance mandate is unprecedented in American history,” Cuccinelli said in statement after the ruling. “It is also important to note that, despite the government’s argument to the contrary, the judge spent more than 20 pages of his ruling stating that the fee imposed for not buying health insurance is a penalty and not a tax. This means that the government will have to base its claimed authority to regulate inactivity on the commerce clause.”
