Legal News

White House Defends Constitutionality of Health-Care Bill

By Ashby Jones

Well, look: We’ve given plenty of airtime in recent days to the forces who think that the health care bill is unconstitutional. In the meantime, we’ve heard nary a word from the White House on how it plans to defend the law.

And that brings us to this story from the BLT blog.

According to the story, White House officials are feeling pretty confident about the legality of the bill. They told the BLT blog that the lawsuits filed Tuesday (here and here) are “nothing new,” and compared the lawsuits to those that attempted to strike down the Voting Rights Act and other major legislation.

The officials didn’t tip their hand much, but did give some clue as to what cases might get cited in their answer and subsequent motions. According to the story:

The administration officials, emphasized the wide latitude Congress has been granted under the U.S. Constitution's commerce clause. One precedent they cited: U.S. v. Southeastern Underwriters Association, a 1944 Supreme Court decision that allowed congressional regulation of insurance.

The officials also cited Gonzales v. Raich, a 2005 decision in which the Court ruled that Congress can regulate intrastate activity when failure to do so could "undercut" its regulation of interstate commerce. "The requirement that everyone have insurance," one official said, "is essential to making those other requirements work," such as non-discrimination based on pre-existing conditions.

We’ll of course bring you more on these cases as they unfold. In the meantime, keep yourselves fascinated by clicking here and reading all the past LB coverage on the issue.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on March 25, 2010 (boomark / email).