ATLANTA — Attorneys for the 26 states challenging the constitutionality of the nation’s new health care law squared off against the Obama administration in an appeals court in Atlanta on Wednesday, where a panel of three judges asked tough questions of both sides.
One judge, Frank Hull, appeared more sympathetic to the law — at one point interrupting an attorney for the states to tell him that his central argument “doesn’t get me very far.”
Nonetheless, the case before the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals could offer the armada of Republican state leaders who have taken on the law their best chance to win during stage two of a multi-pronged, protracted legal battle widely expected to end in the Supreme Court.
More than 30 suits have been filed since the Affordable Care Act was adopted in March 2010, nearly all by individuals and organizations. Appellate courts in Richmond, Va., and Cincinnati have heard arguments in three of the cases over the past several weeks, including one filed separately by the state of Virginia.
At issue in all these cases is whether Congress overstepped its constitutional authority to regulate commerce when it included a provision in the Affordable Care Act that requires virtually all Americans to obtain health insurance after 2014 or pay a fine.
The district judge who heard the Virginia case struck down the insurance mandate but found that the rest of the law could remain intact. In the multi-state lawsuit on appeal in Atlanta, the lower court judge, Senior U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson, invalidated the entire law.
Vinson did not, however, agree with the states’ claim that the legislation violated the Constitution by requiring states to cover a larger share of the poor through Medicaid.
Paul Clement, a solicitor general under President George W. Bush who is representing the states, argued Wednesday that not buying health insurance is a form of inactivity akin to people “sitting in their living room.”
So legal precedents establishing Congress’ right to regulate economic “activity” under the Constitution’s commerce clause do not apply, he said.
