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September 8, 2011 — Citing technical grounds, a federal appeals court in Richmond, Virginia, today tossed out a lower-court decision that declared the healthcare reform requirement to obtain insurance coverage unconstitutional.
Today's decision by the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth District in Richmond vacated a ruling by US District Court Judge Henry Hudson, also in Richmond, who said that the individual mandate "would invite unbridled exercise of federal police powers." In a unanimous decision by a 3-judge panel, the appeals court stated that the state of Virginia, which was the plaintiff in the case, lacked legal standing to bring its suit. The appeals court did not rule on whether the individual mandate was constitutional or not.
The appellate judges today also rendered a split decision on another lower-court decision involving the embattled Affordable Care Act. In November 2010, US District Judge Norman Moon in Lynchburg, Virginia, declared that the individual mandate lies within the power of Congress to regulate interstate commerce under the Constitution's Commerce clause. The requirement, Moon stated, is a proper corrective to the healthcare marketplace problem of cost-shifting caused by the uninsured.
Writing a majority opinion, 2 of the 3 appellate judges vacated Moon's ruling on the grounds that the suit brought against the Affordable Care Act by Liberty University should be dismissed for lack of subject matter jurisdiction.
The appellate decision follows a ruling on August 12 by an US appeals court in Atlanta, Georgia, that declared the individual mandate unconstitutional. The opposite conclusion was reached by an appeals court in Cincinnati, Ohio, in June.
There is plenty of legal ball left to play on the controversy. More rulings on the provision's constitutionality are forthcoming from the US appeals court in the District of Columbia, as well as a number of US district courts. Legal experts and lower-court judges alike predict the US Supreme Court will eventually take up the case to settle conflicting decisions at the appellate and district levels.
