Put Virginia's health care suit on the fast track

By: The News & Advance | The News & Advance
Published: December 19, 2010

Before the ink of President Barack Obama’s signature on HR 3590 was dry,Virginia Attorney Ken Cuccinelli had filed a lawsuit questioning the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

Many of the attorney general’s critics said he was merely grandstanding, trying to muscle his way onto the national political stage. Considering his academic witch hunt of a former University of Virginia climatologist and his stance on civil rights for gays at the state’s colleges and universities, it wasn’t an unreasonable assumption.

But at the time, we stated editorially that the question of the constitutionality of the individual mandate was a legitimate legal question that the courts rightly needed to address.

“Obamacare” was how critics of health reform labeled the legislation, one of the most sweeping expansions of government entitlements in almost half a century.

One of the linchpins of the health reform legislation was something rather ubiquitously called “the individual mandate.” It was a requirement that all citizens purchase a health insurance meeting minimum federal standards of care or be assessed a penalty through the Internal Revenue Service.

Monday, Judge Henry Hudson of the Fourth Circuit in Virginia issued his ruling in Virginia’s suit, striking down the individual mandate as an unconstitutional interpretation of the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution.

In his opinion, Hudson said Congress simply did not have the power to require a person to purchase a product — health care insurance — on the grounds that not doing so would adversely affect interstate commerce, over which Congress has the constitutionally mandated oversight.

Though two other federal judges — including Judge Norman T. Moon of Lynchburg — have found the individual mandate to be constitutional, no one but the most partisan of the attorney general’s critics would deny that the plan should be thoroughly scrutinized by the courts.

And ultimately, everyone agrees, the U.S. Supreme Court will have the final say on the individual mandate. To that end, Attorney General Cuccinelli has asked the Justice Department to join him in expediting the appeal directly to the high court, bypassing intermediate appeals courts.

We hope the federal government concurs. Health reform is too complex and too controversial to let the question of its constitutionality languish in the courts for up to two years.

Put Virginia's health care suit on the fast track

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