U.S. Supreme Court Has Agreed To Review Obamacare Health Law

The Supreme Court will review four issues of the new law:

1. Whether the individual mandate is constitutional?
2. Whether other provisions can be preserved if the mandate is voided?
3. Whether any ruling is premature until 2015?
4. Whether Congress can require states to expand Medicaid programs in 2014?

The Court will hold 2 hours of argument on the constitutionality of the mandate to insist that all Americans obtain health insurance by 2014. Ninety minutes will be allocated for the question of whether some or all of the overall law must fail if the mandate is struck down. One hour will be allowed on the question of whether the Anti-Injunction Act bars some or all of the challenges to the insurance mandate and 1 hour will be set aside to argue the constitutionality of the expansion of the Medicaid program for the poor and disabled.

The issues the Court has agreed to review were chosen from appeals by the federal government, arguments raised by 26 states and a business trade group. The Supreme Court chose not to review questions involving new health care coverage requirements for public and private employers or issues raised by the Thomas More Law Center or Liberty University.

Ilya Shapiro of the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C. said the Health Care reform case was the most significant case since Roe v. Wade; he said the litigation over the mandate might be even more important than Roe.

The court’s decision to allow 5 ½ hours of argument time is unprecedented and extraordinary, said Adam Winkler of the UCLA Law School. The allotment of five and one-half hours for oral argument appears to be a modern record, according to Lyle Denniston of the SCOTUSblog. Denniston states that the most recent lengthy hearing came in a major constitutional dispute over campaign finance law in 2003, but that was only for 4 hours. The length of time specified for the health care review was an indication both of the complexity of the issues involved, and the importance they hold for the constitutional division of power between national and state governments.

Adam Liptak of the New York Times reported on November 18, 2011 that the Supreme Court had named 2 lawyers to act as friends of the court and submit briefs and argue points in the health care law case before the U.S. Supreme Court this March.

Bartow H. Farr III was chosen to argue that the individual mandate-the provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act that requires almost everyone to buy health insurance or face a tax penalty could be separated from the Act and those parts of the Act would still be enforceable without the mandate. Farr will have 90 minutes to present his arguments for severability.

Robert A. Long was chosen to argue that a federal law called the Anti-Injunction Act makes challenges to the mandate premature until 2015. The U.S. Court for the Fourth Circuit, in Richmond, Virginia, accepted that argument in September, as did a dissenting Judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Long will have an hour to argue that challenges to the mandate would be premature until 2015.

The Court has scheduled arguments on the Health Care Law to be heard in March of 2012, and a ruling is expected by June 2012.

~Jane Fraytet~

Can You Predict How the US Supreme Court Will Decide this Criminal Case?

The U. S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in U.S .v.  Jones (Docket No. 10-1259) on Tuesday, November 8^th. The facts of the Jones case were first presented in the DC District Court in 2006 and then in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2010.

The U.S. District Court of D. C. summarized the  Jones case this way in their Memorandum Opinion and Order dated August 1,2011 (2011 WL 3332856):

Antoine Jones the defendant in the above referenced case was found guilty of a conspiracy to distribute and/or possess with intent to distribute five kilograms or more of powder cocaine and fifty grams or more of crack cocaine on January 10, 2008. The Court sentenced Jones to life imprisonment.

On August 6, 2010, the Court of Appeals reversed Jones’s conviction on the grounds that the government had violated the Fourth Amendment by installing a GPS device on Jones’s vehicle without a warrant, 615 F. 3d 544,D.C. Cir. 2010.

The government thru the U.S. Solicitor General sought review of this decision before the Supreme Court, which granted its petition for a writ of certiorari on June 27, 2011.

The question presented in the Jones case was: did the law enforcement officers violate the Fourth Amendment by not getting a warrant before installing a GPS device on the defendant’s car? In a 2010 New York Times article written by Charlie Savage the author presented the question this way:

The issue is whether the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable searches covers a device that records a suspect’s movement for weeks or months without any need for an officer to trail him.

Savage went on to say that Massachusetts, New York, Oregon and Washington all believe that their state constitutions require warrants be issued before GPS devices can be placed on automobiles.

Judge Douglas Ginsburg who wrote the Jones case opinion for the U.S. Court of Appeals of D. C. questioned whether a secret 24-7 surveillance constitutes unreasonable searches? Ginsburg argued that a search that is for a limited period of time is not the same as a search that is for a more extended period of time.

Prolonged surveillance reveals types of information not revealed by short-term surveillance, such as what a person does repeatedly, what he does not do, and what he does ensemble…

A person who knows all of another’s travels can deduce whether he is a weekly churchgoer, a heavy drinker, a regular at the gym, an unfaithful husband, an outpatient receiving medical treatment, an associate of particular individuals or political groups-and not just one such fact about a person, but all such facts, U.S. v. Maynard ,615F.3d 544, at 562.

The questions to be addressed in the Supreme Court by Petitioner and Respondent are:

1. Whether the warrantless use of a GPS tracking device on respondent’s vehicle to monitor its movements on public streets violated the Fourth Amendment.
2. Whether the government violated respondent’s Fourth Amendment rights by attaching the GPS tracking device to his vehicle without a valid warrant and without his consent.

Currently the state courts and the federal circuit courts are divided on whether warrants are required before a GPS device can be used, thus you have the ninth Circuit case US v. Pineda-Moreno, 591 F.3d 1212 and the DC Circuit Court in Jones case reaching different conclusions on the warrant question. The state courts in New York, Oregon and Washington have concluded that their state constitutions demand that warrants must be issued first before any GPS devices can be used issued.

In Commonwealth v. Connolly Judge Cowin concludes that although the US Supreme Court has decided that use of a “beeper” placed inside a vehicle to track that vehicle while traveling on a public road is not a search for Fourth Amendment purposes as in (U.S. v. Knotts),460 U.S. 276, 281-283. The Court has not yet determined whether installation of a GPS device on a vehicle constitutes a search under the 4^th Amendment.

~Jane Fraytet~

What do you think?