Business Group Joins Suit on Health Law
Published: May 14, 2010 - New York Times
With the aim of depoliticizing a largely Republican assault, the leading
lobbying group for small businesses has joined officials from 20 states in their
legal
challenge to the new health care law.
An amended
complaint filed Friday in Federal District Court in Pensacola, Fla., lists
the lobbying group, the National Federation of Independent Business, as a
plaintiff in the lawsuit that was originally filed in March by attorneys general
from 13 states.
Attorneys general or governors from seven other states formally joined the
lawsuit on Friday. Among the state plaintiffs, only Attorney General James D.
Caldwell of Louisiana is not a Republican.
Two individuals also joined the litigation. One is the uninsured owner of an
automobile repair shop in Panama City, Fla. The other is a man from Washington
State who prefers to pay his medical bills out of pocket rather than being
compelled to obtain insurance, as will be the case starting in 2014.
The additions of the business association and individual plaintiffs,
according to lawyers involved, were intended to shift any public perception that
the lawsuit was primarily a political device. But the new plaintiffs also may
help the states fight an anticipated challenge by the federal government to
their standing, or legal authority, to bring the lawsuit.
The Florida lawsuit is among at least a dozen filed against the Democratic health
care law since President
Obama signed it on March 23. Virginia’s attorney general has filed a
separate case in Richmond, and other lawsuits have been mounted by physicians’
groups and conservative legal centers.
The cases typically focus on the provision that will require most individuals
to obtain commercial or government health
insurance, a mandate with few precedents in American policy or
jurisprudence.
The lawsuits argue that the insurance requirement, by penalizing people for
not purchasing a product, represents an unconstitutional extension of Congress’s
power to regulate interstate commerce.
The federal government has responded in court filings that an individual
decision to not purchase insurance is, in effect, a decision about how to pay
for future medical care. Taken in the aggregate, those decisions substantially
affect interstate commerce by shifting the cost of covering the uninsured to
policy-holders, health care providers and taxpayers, government lawyers
maintain.
In papers
submitted this week in a Michigan case, the Justice Department vigorously
attacked the plaintiffs’ legal standing to challenge an insurance mandate that
does not take effect until 2014, and thus has yet to cause any harm. In the
Florida case, the federal government’s response — in the form of a motion to
dismiss the lawsuit — is not due until June 16. Oral arguments are scheduled for
September.
Although the health care law provides substantial tax credits to small
businesses that provide insurance to employees, the National Federation of
Independent Business wound up opposing the legislation because of what it viewed
as unacceptable mandates and costs for its members.
“The outpouring of opposition to this new law was overwhelming,” said Dan
Danner, the group’s president, “and our members urged us to do everything in our
power to stop this unconstitutional law.”