Supremes to Hear Case on Affordable Care Act

The legal challenges to the Affordable Care Act commenced just as soon as the bill became law in 2010.

The legal challenges to the Affordable Care Act commenced just as soon as the bill became law in 2010. There have already been a number of lower courts that have ruled on the constitutionality of the law’s individual mandate, and I have written fairly extensively about these cases here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. Those links are in chronological order, and I’d suggest reading them if you need to get up to speed quickly on the issue.

More recently, the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled in favor of the individual mandate, and the decision is notable in that a conservative judge and Reagan appointee broke with the precedent of conservative judges ruling against the law. In fact, he was the second judge to do so. Jonathan Cohn has more of the details over at The New Republic as does Timothy Jost at the Health Affairs blog.

This decision was the prelude to the Supreme Court’s decision to hear the Affordable Care Act case early next year. In fact, they’re not only going to hear it, they’ve set aside a record amount of time for oral arguments–5 1/2 hours to be exact. The New York Times’ Adam Liptak has more.

Meanwhile, voters in Ohio passed a meaningless referendum rejecting the individual mandate. Why is it meaningless? Because if the Supreme Court finds the individual mandate unconstitutional, the Ohio amendment won’t be necessary, and if the Court upholds the mandate, federal law trumps state law, rendering the amendment useless. Which will it be? We’ll have our answer just in time for the election in 2012.