The Supreme Court agreed Monday to review President Barack Obama's health-care overhaul, in a landmark case that could define not only Mr. Obama's presidency but the scope of federal power well into the 21st century.
The Supreme Court said Monday it will take the Obama health-law case in its current term, meaning a decision by June 2012. The move comes as the legal prospects for the law have improved, as Ashby Jones explains on Lunch Break.
The case is likely to be heard in March, and reflecting its significance, the court ordered an extraordinary 5˝ hours of argument, compared with the 60 minutes typically allotted. A ruling is expected by June 30, in the midst of an election campaign where perceptions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Mr. Obama's signature legislative achievement, could be pivotal.
The justices ordered arguments on several contested provisions of the health law, but the flashpoint is its requirement that most Americans carry health insurance or pay a penalty along with their income taxes.
The individual mandate has emerged as the new crucible of states' rights, with the principal case pitting 26 Republican state attorneys general and governors against the administration.
Both sides previewed their 2012 campaign arguments over the law Monday.
The Obama administration says it has already expanded coverage to more than a million young people whom the law allows to stay on their parents' plans until they are 26 years old.
Republicans have pledged to repeal the law if they win the 2012 election. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) said it "represents an unprecedented and unconstitutional expansion of the federal government into the daily lives of every American."
Democrats initially hoped the mandate to carry health insurance, conceived as a private-sector alternative to the public single-payer system many on the left preferred, would draw Republican support. Instead, conservatives seized on it as exemplifying federal overreach, saying in a string of lawsuits that Congress had asserted powers far beyond its constitutional authority to regulate interstate commerce.
The state coalition, led by Florida's attorney general, prevailed in August before the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta. It ruled the mandate unconstitutional in a 207-page opinion, declaring it "breathtaking in its expansive scope."
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Donald Verrilli represents the Obama administration as the solicitor general. He is expected to lead the defense of the health law at the Supreme Court. A graduate of Yale and Columbia Law School, he served as a Supreme Court clerk to Justice William Brennan and was a longtime partner at Jenner & Block before becoming solicitor general in June.
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Paul Clement represents the 26 states challenging the law. He served as solicitor general during the George W. Bush administration. A graduate of Georgetown University and Harvard Law School, he quit the King & Spalding law firm in April over its decision to stop defending a law that bans federal recognition of gay marriage and joined a smaller firm, Bancroft.
That decision proved to be the outlier among the four appeals courts to hear separate challenges to the mandate. In Richmond, Va., the Fourth Circuit dismissed a suit as premature, holding that challengers must wait until the mandate takes effect in 2014. The Cincinnati-based Sixth Circuit and the District of Columbia Circuit in Washington both handed the administration outright victories, upholding the mandate as a rational exercise of congressional authority to regulate the national health-care market.
Those decisions particularly stung the right, because they included opinions from influential conservative judges whose records show little ideological affinity for the Obama administration. With his June concurring opinion, Sixth Circuit Judge Jeffrey Sutton, one of several young conservatives selected by former President George W. Bush, became the first Republican-appointed judge to uphold the mandate. Last week, Judge Laurence Silberman of the District of Columbia Circuit not only upheld the mandate, but embraced the New Deal-era precedents that expanded the power of the government to regulate the economy.
While a new and "intrusive exercise" of congressional power, Judge Silberman likened the mandate to other transformative federal laws the Supreme Court has upheld—including the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Controlled Substances Act of 1970 and the New Deal agricultural program that generated a landmark ruling, Wickard v. Filburn, affirming congressional power to address national economic problems.
Public opinion was almost evenly divided on the law for more than a year after its passage, but has recently turned. A poll released last month by the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation found that 51% of respondents had an unfavorable opinion and only 34% felt favorably about the law. That was the first time since March 2010 that a majority in the monthly poll said they disliked the law as a whole.
Ohio voters last week approved a declaration against mandatory participation "in a health-care system," a protest move because a state cannot nullify federal law.
In addition to the individual mandate, the court said it would review the law's expansion of the federal-state Medicaid program, which states said violated their sovereignty. It also will consider whether the balance of the law would stand even if the individual mandate were voided, as the 11th Circuit ruled.
The justices also will consider the administration's argument that the mandate falls within Congress's taxing power, as the penalty for noncompliance is collected by the Internal Revenue Service. No appeals court adopted that view, although one judge did.
And the Supreme Court even left open the possibility that it might not rule on the merits of the law at all, saying it would consider arguments endorsed by one appellate court that any suit should wait until the mandate goes into effect in 2014.
The administration has long presented the individual mandate as just one of a set of rules designed to provide health coverage to many of the 50 million Americans who lack it.
The Supreme Court will hear arguments over the constitutionality of Obama's health care law, Jess Bravin reports on Markets Hub. Photo: AFP/ Getty Images.
The act prohibits insurance carriers from discriminating against those with pre-existing medical conditions, and it requires that coverage be universally available. Those features are only feasible, the government says, if the individual mandate expands the insurance pool to include younger, healthier Americans who might otherwise forgo carrying insurance until they fall ill or are injured.
Insurance rates have continued to rise since portions of the law have taken effect. The Kaiser Family Foundation estimated in September that employee premiums rose 8% in 2011 for individual workers, and 9% for workers who purchased family plans.
Mercer, a human resources consulting firm, estimated around the same time that the average cost of employee health coverage will go up another 5.4% in 2012.
Critics concede that Congress could establish a public program expanding Medicare to all Americans and raising the money through a tax like the one people already pay to provide Medicare to those 65 and older. The reason is that the Constitution gives Congress power to tax and spend to promote the nation's "general welfare."
More on the Court
Read more about cases the court will hear this term and see details on the justices.
But challengers assert that the Affordable Care Act, far from regulating commerce, compels those who prefer to stay entirely outside the marketplace to enter it, thereby impinging on their liberty. The government maintains that because everyone can be expected to need health care, the measure simply regulates the method for financing it.
The health-insurance industry has maintained that the individual mandate is an essential component of the law, but representatives have long refused to speculate on what might happen if the individual mandate is removed from the law. "There was widespread agreement throughout the health-care reform discussions that the insurance market reforms in the Affordable Care Act could only work if all Americans have health-care coverage," said Robert Zirkelbach, a spokesman for the America's Health Insurance Plans association.
If the court strikes down the mandate, the vote is likely to be 5-4. Based on their prior writings, the four liberal justices will almost surely consider it to be a policy choice for Congress rather than a question of individual liberty.
The suspense resides on the court's right wing, where scholars say that based on prior writings, only Justice Clarence Thomas is virtually certain to consider the mandate unconstitutional.
Most speculation surrounds Justice Anthony Kennedy, who has sometimes sided with liberals, and Chief Justice John Roberts, who last year joined liberal Justice Stephen Breyer in affirming broad federal authority over policies Congress deems "necessary and proper."
While a ruling isn't likely to change partisan views of the law, it could influence independent voters, said Bruce Cain, director of the University of California Washington Center.
"A win at the court has a bit of a halo effect for Obama," Mr. Cain said, but a loss could damage his credibility with independent voters.
—Louise Radnofsky contributed to this article.
