Va. begins courtroom assault on federal health-care overhaul

July 7, 2010

By lind S. Helderman, Washington Post Staff Writer

Friday, July 2, 2010

RICHMOND -- The legal challenge to the nation's new health-care law was launched

Thursday in a courtroom in Richmond, where the office of Virginia Attorney

General Ken Cuccinelli II argued that the measure is an unprecedented overreach

by Washington that violates the founders' intention of a limited federal

government.

Arguing the case for Virginia, Solicitor General E. Duncan Getchell Jr. told a

judge that it would be " unprecedented, " " ahistorical " and " radical " for the

federal government to require an individual to buy a private product -- in this

case, health insurance.

In front of a packed courtroom -- with spectators overflowing into a second room

and supporters of the federal law demonstrating outside -- attorneys for the

Obama administration responded that the Virginia suit has no merit and should be

tossed out of court. They said the law's mandate that Americans buy health

insurance was well within Congress's constitutional power.

District Court Judge Henry E. Hudson said he will decide within 30 days whether

to allow the case to proceed.

The hearing was the first skirmish in a legal war over the federal health-care

overhaul that is not likely to be settled until it makes its way to the Supreme

Court.

The Virginia suit is one of two major state-level, Republican-led efforts to

kill the federal health-care law in court. It is a fast-attack assault that

narrowly contends that Congress overstepped its authority by requiring

individuals to buy health insurance or face a fine. Attorneys general in 20

other states have joined a suit filed in Florida that adds the assertion that

the federal law encroaches on the sovereignty of the states by requiring them to

expand Medicaid programs.

Cuccinelli has said his suit was necessitated by a Virginia statute that went

into effect Thursday making it illegal to force residents to buy health

insurance. The measure was passed by legislators explicitly to clash with the

federal law, which imposes a fine on people who don't buy insurance by 2014.

'Rocket docket'

By filing in the Eastern District of Virginia, known for its speedy " rocket

docket, " Cuccinelli has ensured that Virginia's case will be the first in the

nation to be heard...

html

Recommended Posts