Virginia’s Republican governor and attorney general pushed back Tuesday against the Obama administration’s argument that the state lacks the right to sue the federal government over health care mandates.
U.S. Justice Department lawyers, in a brief seeking to dismiss Virginia’s legal challenge to the sweeping federal health care overhaul, accused Virginia of “manufacturing” its legal standing to sue.
Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell invoked the Challenger disaster and Three Mile Island meltdown Tuesday to rally Virginians to offshore-oil drilling.
President Obama suspended plans to open up a stretch of ocean off Virginia’s shore to oil and gas exploration. The decision comes after a BP oil rig exploded and sank, causing a massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
“I say let’s not give up,” said McDonnell on WTOP’s “As the Governor” program. “Let’s figure out what happened and make the changes.”
The federal government attacked as bogus the underlying justification for the lawsuit: A law passed by the General Assembly in March designed to exempt Virginians from a mandate to buy health insurance. The need to defend that state statute, Gov. Bob McDonnell and Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli both argue, gives Virginia the right to sue.
“We do our job to defend the statutes of Virginia and the interests of the people of Virginia,” said McDonnell, a former state attorney general, on WTOP’s “Ask the Governor” program. “In this case, I think that’s what the attorney general has done.”
In a video statement posted on his Web site, Cuccinelli said: “This case is part of the job of this office.”
Both sides framed the lawsuit as consequential beyond health care. McDonnell called it “a critically important issue, not just about health care, but about the reaches of federal power.”
The Obama administration, in turn, argued that allowing Virginia to continue its lawsuit would risk turning more political fights into legal ones.
“If states could manufacture standing in the way Virginia attempts to do here, every policy dispute lost in the legislative arena could be transformed into an issue for decision by the courts,” Justice Department lawyers wrote.
Virginia’s lawsuit against the health care overhaul is separate from a larger 20-state suit led by Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum.
Both suits argue the authority to regulate interstate commerce granted by the U.S. Constitution falls short of allowing the federal government to force its citizens to buy insurance.
