Joan Biskupic
USA Today
5/5/2011
WASHINGTON — The legal battle over the federal health care law shifts to a historic Richmond courthouse Tuesday, in the first appellate hearing on the constitutionality of the Obama-sponsored legislation.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit will consider two cases testing the sweeping law that requires people to buy health insurance by 2014 or face a tax penalty. In one of those two cases, a trial judge declared that mandate, the linchpin provision of the 2010 health-care law, unconstitutional. In the other case, a judge upheld it.
Competing arguments from the Obama administration and its challengers, which have come into focus as lower courts nationwide have reviewed the law extending insurance to 32 million Americans, will now play out before the highest court to date — one that brings the case closer to its likely destination, the U.S. Supreme Court.
“The fact that the court of appeals will now rule is extremely significant,” University of Virginia law professor John Jeffries says. “The upshot of repeated district court (rulings) can only be described as confusion. The court of appeals will focus and narrow the issue” for the Supreme Court…
…For the first time in its history, the 4th Circuit (which covers Maryland, North Carolina,South Carolina and West Virginia, as well as Virginia) will be providing an audio link of the day’s arguments on its website: http://www.ca4.uscourts.gov/.
The complete article is at USA Today
Related: Seeking Business, States Loosen Insurance Rules at The New York Times.
