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Mississippi Judge Rejects Legal Challenge To Obama Health Care Law

Tracy Bloom |
February 3, 2011 | 9:19 p.m. PST

Executive Producer

President Obama scored a legal victory in the fight over his health care reform plan on Thursday when a Mississippi judge threw out a legal challenge in federal court. The suit challenged the constitutionality of the bill.

The Huffington Post reported: "The judge, Keith Starret, who serves on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi, ruled that plaintiffs suing over the coming implementation of the individual mandate did not demonstrate sufficient standing for him to take the case. He "granted in part" the administrations motion to dismiss the case, but gave the plaintiffs 30 days to amend their complaint." 

The latest legal ruling comes just a few days after a federal judge in Florida ruled the entire health care law unconstitutional. That lawsuit was brought on by 26 states.

The Washington Post reported: "The decision by U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson represents a more sweeping repudiation of the law than the December ruling in a suit brought by Virginia that found the requirement that most Americans purchase health insurance to be unconstitutional." 

In the Mississippi case, the Huffington Post reported the judge did not rule on that particular requirement: "Starret didn't weigh into the legal debate surrounding Congress' ability to force individuals to buy health insurance. Rather, he determined that those filing suit had failed to fully demonstrate that their constitutional rights were being violated." However, Starret "seemed to dismiss the argument that a legal debate over whether the individual mandate violated constitutional rights had to be put off until the provision was actually implemented." 

"The Court is not persuaded by this argument for the same reasons stated by the United States District Court for the Northern District of Florida," he wrote, adding that if the principal worked one way, it also worked the other. "If the Court may not imagine circumstances that would deprive a plaintiff of standing, it likewise may not imagine circumstances that would confer standing upon a plaintiff."

Also on Thursday, the Washington Post reported that Virginia will ask that the United States Supreme Court to immediately review the state's legal challenge the health care bill. The Justice Department will oppose that request on the grounds that the suit be heard in the lower courts first.



 

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