Supreme Court to hear arguments on timing of health-care ruling
Monday, March 26, 2012
Supreme Court to hear arguments on timing of health-care
ruling
By: Robert Barnes, Washington Post
The Supreme Court begins its constitutional review of the
health-care overhaul law Monday with a fundamental question: Is the
court barred from making such a decision at this time?
The justices will hear 90 minutes of argument about whether an
obscure 19th-century law - the Anti-Injunction Act - means that the
court cannot pass judgment on the law until its key provisions go
into effect in 2014.
It is the rare issue on which both sides agree: the Obama
administration lawyers and those representing the states and
private organization challenging the new law argue that the Supreme
Court should decide the constitutional question now.
But a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit
disagreed, and so the Supreme Court ordered arguments on the
issue.
At the heart of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act
is the requirement that almost all Americans either obtain health
insurance by 2014 or pay a penalty. The question the court will
consider Monday is whether that penalty should be considered a tax.
And if it is, does the Anti-Injunction Act mean that courts must
stay out of the way until someone is actually required to pay
it?
The first time that could occur is when someone files a tax
return in 2015, because that is how the penalty would be
collected.
Since all parties in the lawsuits want the court to act now on
the constitutional question, the justices appointed a private
lawyer - Supreme Court practitioner Robert A. Long of the
Washington law firm Covington & Burling - to present the
argument that the Anti-Injunction Act says courts must wait.
The law first passed in 1867 says that "no suit for the purpose
of restraining the assessment or collection of any tax shall be
maintained in any court by any person." It was designed to make
sure the flow of tax collection necessary to keep the government
running was not disrupted by lawsuits.
In his brief, Long points out that the penalty certainly looks
like a tax - it is estimated to raise up to $6 billion a year by
the end of the decade. The penalty is calculated based on a
person's income and is collected by the Internal Revenue
Service.
He also noted that Congress could have provided a mechanism that
allowed courts the authority to immediately decide the
constitutionality of the law, but did not.
In the early stages of litigation over the health-care law, the
Obama administration agreed that Anti-Injunction Act barred an
immediate constitutional decision. But it dropped that argument,
and told the Supreme Court that the "penalty" for failure to secure
health insurance is not a "tax" for Anti-Injunction Act
purposes.
The 26 states challenging the health-care law, as well as the
private organization and individuals who are party to the
challenge, also want the court to act now.
The "purpose" of the challenge is to "invalidate the ACA's
mandate that [individuals] purchase costly insurance," not to block
the penalty, wrote Michael A. Carvin, who is representing the
organization, the National Federation of Independent Businesses,
and private individuals.
Besides the 4th Circuit panel, the view that the Anti-Injunction
Act forecloses a ruling at this time was endorsed by Circuit Judge
Brett M. Kavanaugh, an influential conservative member of the U.S.
Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
"Waiting to decide might mean never having to decide,"
Kavanaugh wrote, keeping the courts out of the political fray. If
there is no change in the law between now and 2015, he said, the
constitutional decision could be made then.
You can follow the timeline of the Supreme Court
here.