DOJ files brief in Florida health care appeal

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DOJ files brief in Florida health care appeal

May 19, 2011 09:22:39 am

[JURIST] The US Department of Justice (DOJ) [official website] on Wednesday urged the US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit [official website] to overturn a ruling [brief, PDF] declaring the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) [HR 3590; JURIST news archive] unconstitutional. The DOJ argued that the health care reform law is constitutional due to the overwhelming burden on interstate commerce without the law’s enactment:

Plaintiffs do not dispute that the commerce power allows Congress to regulate how people pay for services in the vast interstate health care services market, which is quintessential economic activity. They take issue, instead, with the means that Congress chose to regulate this economic activity. Plaintiffs urge that the correct way to ensure that people pay for the medical services they consume is not by imposing an insurance requirement, but by “imposing restrictions or penalties on individuals who attempt to consume health care services without insurance.” … Congress did not exceed its commerce power by opting to require minimum insurance coverage or the payment of a tax, instead of conditioning access to health care on the purchase of insurance and thereby denying the sick and injured access to medical care if they do not have coverage. Plaintiffs’ proposed regulatory scheme disregards both the essential characteristics of the health care services market and the nature of insurance. Because the need for health care is unpredictable, plaintiffs’ approach would require that individuals obtain insurance or else risk being left on the street after a car accident. Thus, under plaintiffs’ scheme, the penalty for failing to maintain minimum coverage—denial of treatment—would be far more draconian than the tax penalty that Congress enacted.

In January, Judge Roger Vinson of the US District Court for the Northern District of Florida [official website] voided [JURIST report] the PPACA, saying that requiring all Americans over the age of 18 to have health insurance exceeded the power of Congress under the Commerce Clause [Cornell LII backgrounder]. The DOJ filed an appeal [JURIST report] in March.

Court challenges to the PPACA continue across the nation. Earlier this week, the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) [advocacy website] sought reinstatement [JURIST report] of its dismissed lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the health care reform law. In April, the US Supreme Court denied [JURIST report] Virginia’s request for the court to rule on the constitutionality of the health care reform law on an expedited basis. A judge for the US District Court for the District of New Jersey [official website] rejected [JURIST report] a lawsuit challenging its constitutionality, on jurisdictional grounds of standing [Cornell LII backgrounder], similar to a dismissal [JURIST report] in the US District Court for the District of New Hampshire [official website]. A judge for the US District Court for the Northern District of Florida [official website] struck down the law in January, while in October, a judge in Michigan upheld the law [JURIST report]. US Courts of Appeal for the Third, Sixth and Fourth circuits are all hearing oral arguments in appeals of lower court rulings, while appeals are pending in the DC circuit as well as the Eighth and Ninth circuits.

Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail

On April 16, 1963, an incarcerated Martin Luther King, Jr. (arrested for demonstrating in defiance of a court order) wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail in response to a published statement by eight fellow clergymen from Alabama.

Part of the letter read: We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we stiff creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging dark of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross-county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness" then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience. Read the full text of the Letter.