The US Supreme Court began a new term Monday likely to decide a constitutional challenge to President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul, a hot button issue just months before the 2012 elections.
During the session which runs to late June, the nine justices are expected to tackle a number of other cases on some of the most divisive issues in America, from immigration and affirmative action to gay marriage, free speech in the form of television profanity and the status of Jerusalem.
The courtroom was packed for the first hearing on the right of patients and doctors to sue California after the cash-strapped state cut fees to providers without first getting approval from the federal agency that runs the Medicaid health care program for the poor.
Ilya Shapiro, a court expert at the Cato Institute, described the sweeping health care reform that Obama championed and signed into law in early 2010 as the “elephant in the room,” overshadowing all other cases.
“This is definitely the issue of this term,” said Michael Carvin, a leading Washington constitutional lawyer for the Jones Day firm who has argued cases before the court.
“It could be the term of the century, or at least of the decade.”
The health care legislation extended coverage to an extra 32 million people and fulfilled decades of Democratic dreams of social reform, but was fiercely contested by Republicans. It has resurfaced as a prominent issue in the lead-up to the November 2012 presidential and congressional elections.
The Obama administration last week asked the court to rule on whether the law is constitutional, attacking an appeals court ruling in August that struck down a central provision that would require all Americans to have health insurance by 2014.
The justices, confronted with contradictory lower court rulings, have received three other appeals, including one by a group of 26 US states seeking a complete overhaul of the law.
In all likelihood, the court will hand down a decision in June.
“The Supreme Court is not going to decide on the basis of politics but on the basis of law,” said Steven Shapiro, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union rights group.
“The issue is not whether it’s a good law, but whether Congress has the authority to enact it.”
Pacific Legal Foundation lawyer Timothy Sandefur stressed that “regardless what the decision is, it’s going to be one of the most dramatic decisions in the history of constitutional law, because the court will have to decide what the limits are on Congress’s power.”
Other politically sensitive issues likely on the table, such as gay marriage and state laws clamping down on immigration, involve “the power of the states against the power of the national government,” noted constitutional law specialist Elizabeth Papez.
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