WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday turned down Virginia’s request that it rule immediately on the constitutionality of the nation’s health care overhaul.
The decision to reject Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli’s request for expedited review, announced routinely without elaboration or noted dissent, is not surprising. The court rarely takes up issues that have not received a full review in the nation’s appeals courts.
Various challenges to the health care law championed by the Obama administration and passed by the Democratic-controlled Congress in 2010 are proceeding rapidly. Hearings are scheduled for next month in the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., and two other appellate courts will address the issue in June.
Cuccinelli, a Republican elected in 2009, has been one of the most vocal opponents of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA).
He challenged Congress’ authority to pass the so-called individual mandate, which requires nearly all Americans either be covered by their employer’s insurance or buy their own coverage.
Cuccinelli told the court that it should short-circuit the usual appeals process because of a “palpable consensus in this country that the question of PPACA’s constitutionality must be and will be decided in this court.”
But the Obama administration countered that the individual mandate requirement does not take effect until 2014, and that the justices would benefit from reviews of the law now underway in the appellate courts.
Lawsuits challenging the act have been filed across the country, and so far, Democratic-appointed judges have upheld the constitutionality of the individual mandate, Republican-appointed judges have struck it down.
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