Legal Challenges to Obamacare Live On
Think the legal assault on Obamacare ended with the Supreme Court decision last June? Think again.
Legal Challenges to Obamacare Live On
Robert I. Field, Ph.D., J.D., M.P.H.
By Rob Field
Think the legal assault on Obamacare ended with the Supreme Court decision last June? Think again.
The Supreme Court upheld Obamacare’s most controversial provision, the mandate that all individuals maintain health coverage or pay a penalty. It ruled that the penalty is effectively a tax, which places it within Congress’ broad taxing power.
But dozens of other lawsuits are pending. Many are on hold until the law fully takes effect in 2014. However, at least four could move forward before then, and courts have recently cleared two of them to proceed.
The first case that was cleared to move ahead was brought by Liberty University, an evangelical Christian school in Virginia. It challenged a mandate in the law that larger employers must offer health coverage to their workers. The suit claims that by requiring organizations to pay into the health care system, the law effectively forces them to subsidize abortions, which many other plans cover. This conflicts with its religiously based opposition to abortion, and therefore infringes its right to religious freedom under the first amendment to the Constitution.
Although the law contains an exemption from the mandate for religious organizations, Liberty still sees it as problematic. It claims that the exemption unconstitutionally entangles the government with religion by letting government officials decide which organizations are eligible.
An appeals court had put the case on hold until 2014. It reasoned that the employer mandate, like the individual mandate, is a tax, and federal law prohibits courts from considering the validity of new taxes until they have been levied and collected.
However, the Supreme Court ruled last week that the case can proceed right away.
The second case was brought by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York and two other Catholic organizations. They challenged a provision in the law that requires health insurance policies to include coverage for contraception. As in the Liberty suit, this one claims a violation of religious beliefs and is one of several that have been brought on this ground.
Once again, the law exempts religious organizations from this obligation. Regulations implementing the exemption are in development but have not yet been issued. A federal district court in Brooklyn held that the suit does not have to wait for the regulations to be issued before it can be heard.
Two other lawsuits challenge the law on technical grounds. One, brought by the nonprofit Pacific Legal Foundation, asserts that it is invalid because it originated in the Senate. The Constitution specifies that tax legislation must originate in the House of Representatives.
The other was brought by Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt. He seeks to prevent the government from giving subsidies to some low-income individuals who purchase policies under the law. Obamacare authorizes financial help for people who obtain coverage through “an exchange established by the state.” However, some states, like Oklahoma, may opt to let the federal government run their exchange for them. The suit claims that these exchanges are not truly state-run, so subsidies should not apply to policies sold through them.
If the subsidies are thrown out in states with federally run exchanges, the employer mandate would go with it. The penalty on employers who do not provide coverage is tied to the number of workers who turn to an exchange for subsidized coverage instead.
So, is Obamacare still in legal trouble? The answer is probably not.
The two suits that allege violations of religious freedom will have difficulty demonstrating harm, since the law specifically exempts religious organizations from the provisions in question. The government clearly has the power to decide when a religious claim is legitimate. It does so in many contexts, like granting tax exemptions.
The suits based on technicalities are just that. They allege fairly minor drafting errors and procedural nuances that would not justify invalidating the entire law.
And in order to succeed, these cases would ultimately have to survive a trip to the Supreme Court. What is the chance the justices would be willing to visit that hornet’s nest of an issue a second time?
Obamacare’s opponents apparently won’t give up. That is unfortunate. Their time and resources would be much better spent helping to make health reform succeed than clogging the courts with a parade of questionable challenges.
We can only hope that is overturned.....A dictatorship will be worse for all of us than a welfare state....and we are approaching both...— nuggett- Sorry, nugget head, but the law is the law and will remain so. I wish you would go live in a dictatorship so you know what that's like. Providing univeral health care for all Americans is neither the hallmark of a dictatorship nor a welfare state. I love people like you who throw around terms and have no idea what they mean. Slither back to the 18th century and let the world proceed on its proper course.— mike 1717
- Socialist— dcn
- Republicans can't stand that women, children, minorities, and gays will now have access to the healthcare the Bush and the Republicans denied to them far too long.— eldiablodelsol2009
- "legal assault" is a term Mr. Field would never use if a liberal was bringing a legal challenge to a law.— justablogger
- Wait till U middle class DUMBOS that reelected this guy are paying for the rich folk tax increase, this will be hilarious to watch.— onepercenter
- Don't worry nuggett, when these guys get the bill for this revenue neutral fiasco in waiting they'll be crying out of their empty wallets. We all know how efficient the feds are at administering these things. They can't keep social security running properly so lets give them 30% of the economy and see how they do. Yeah, right. My parents and grandparents, all immigrants, didn't have these programs and did just fine thank you very much. It's when these behemoths started that the problems began. Bigger government, less self reliance. Work and save...now there's a novel approach.— tpizza
- Leftists can't participate in a debate without their best friends: Ad Hominem and Straw Man. Universal health care is the very definition of a welfare state-- if you attempt to provide basic services for all from the contributions of part, it's a welfare state. It's best that you all admit that. If you like socialism, call it what it is. And my grandparent wouldn't have struggled without social programs; they lived for years without them. To pretend that everyone needs social programs to survive is preposterous, and you know it. People prospered before them, and obviously you have to have prosperous people in order to PAY for the programs.— operagost
- onepercenter uses the term "dumbos" Guess what.....blus states are far more educated than the red states— Argos
- hmmm the government bankrupted the us postal service, amtrack, social security, now lets leave healthcare in their hands? government was not intended to run business as is evident by there complete failure in these other ventures what makes you think they will succeed in running healthcare? obama never ran,started, or succedded in any business venture he is clueless as to what this entails. this is a failure of epic proportions waitng to happen, and for those of you who agree with it wait unitl you get your share of the bill, your tune will change instantly message to obama, nutter, and all the other democrats who think government should be in business: your wasting your time, our money, less government always succeeds!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1— coolbreeze
- operagost.....when a person does not have health insurance and uses the emergency room as their healthcare who pays for that?— Argos
- Hopefully this article was an editorial. Otherwise, as a news story the writer goes way to far in offering his opinion on both the lawsuits and Obamacare.— anti-tax
- The method of health reform that is the characteristic of Obamacare is comparable to a school teacher who punishes the whole class because one person had caused trouble. A counterproductive method of discipline!
Obamacare is punishing all the rest of us, whose medical insurance coverage was fine, needed fine tuning but was fine, all in a counterproductive way of providing coverage to those relatively few who cannot afford insurance or who voluntarily do not want it. But, but, Obamacare will essentially force tax payers to pay for those now not covered with our tax money anyway.
So instead of punishing all of us in the USA, why did all the Democrats and Our Dear Leader, not focus on the one big issue, the ones in the class who needed help after school, and leave the rest of us alone?
Obamacare is madness, it is the mad and unAmerican will of an anarchist president and it is the wrong way to reform and to fix any issue in our country.
— GAC
