Virginia Appeals Court Upholds Health Care Law

Pres­i­dent Obama mak­ing history

The Fourth Cir­cuit Court of Appeals in Rich­mond, Vir­ginia, over­turned a lower court rul­ing that found uncon­sti­tu­tional the “indi­vid­ual man­date” por­tion of the Patient Pro­tec­tion and Afford­able Care Act, and has thrown out two cases. They ruled the State of Vir­ginia does not have stand­ing to sue; and that Lib­erty Uni­ver­sity must wait until the law actu­ally goes into effect, in order to have evi­dence of proven harm.

This is the sec­ond appeals court to rule in favor of the Admin­is­tra­tion on this issue. The Eleventh Cir­cuit Court of Appeals, in Atlanta, last month held the “indi­vid­ual man­date” to be beyond the Con­sti­tu­tional author­ity of Congress.

As reported in Politico:

The court said Vir­ginia had no right to bring its law­suit because “the sole pro­vi­sion chal­lenged here — the indi­vid­ual man­date — imposes no oblig­a­tions” on the state itself.

In the case of Lib­erty Uni­ver­sity, the court said the legal chal­lenge had come too soon: “Because this suit con­sti­tutes a pre-​​enforcement action seek­ing to restrain the assess­ment of a tax, the Anti-​​Injunction Act strips us of juris­dic­tion. Accord­ingly, we must vacate the judg­ment of the dis­trict court and remand the case with instruc­tions to dis­miss for lack of jurisdiction.”

What do you think the rul­ing? Does this help the case in sup­port of PPACA? Will it affect the (almost cer­tain) appeal to the Supreme Court? Or does the pro­ce­dural aspect of the rul­ing, rather than rul­ing on mer­its, make this deci­sion essen­tially unim­por­tant? Will it have an effect on next year’s elections?

Related arti­cles

• Fourth Cir­cuit Court of Appeals vacates Hud­son rul­ing against Afford­able Care Act (dai​lykos​.com)
• Wash­ing­ton High Court Rules For AG On Health Care Chal­lenge (busi​ness​law​daily​.net)
• Court rules indi­vid­ual health­care man­date is uncon­sti­tu­tional (the​hill​.com)