The wait is finally over. On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari to a series of cases challenging the constitutionality of President Barack Obama’s health care reform law.
For five and a half hours over the course of two days sometime next March, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on several aspects of the the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. For two hours, the Court will consider whether the mandate that all U.S. citizens must buy health insurance or pay a penalty is unconstitutional. For the next 90 minutes, the Court will hear arguments about whether the individual mandate is “severable” — that is, if the court strikes that part of the law down, whether the entire law is invalidated. The following hour will be spent on the topic of the Anti-injunction Act and whether it prohibits a challenge to the law before the penalties associated with the individual mandate go into effect in 2014. Finally, the Court will consider the constitutionality of the Act’s requirement that States pay 10 percent of the cost of expanded Medicaid coverage.
The five-and-a-half-hour block of arguments on one law will set a modern-day court record, eclipsing the four hours spent considering challenges to the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform in 2003. During the session, the Court will likely consider weighty issues, such as the power and reach of the Federal government, States rights, individual liberty, and the nature of the health care market.
Over the course of the past year, Federal appeals courts have considered a variety of challenges to the health care act, with some upholding it in its entirety, others dismissing the cases on technical grounds, and one Court — the 11th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals — striking down the individual mandate but upholding the rest of the law. It was a series of cases arising from the 11th Circuit — Florida v. Department of Health and Human Services, National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services v. Florida — that the Court on Monday agreed to hear.
Supreme Court Debates will be covering these cases extensively, including oral arguments and the final Court decision, which is expected in late June.
