SCOTUS Rejects Option To Rule On Health Care Law Before Appeals Court Rulings

[Obama 2012 1,714]

While I get why they rejected hearing it right now, it's not unheard of for them to do it either.

In a case like this when billions of dollars are at stake in implementation or not, and when you've got so many lawsuits nationwide on the same thing, I think it would be best for the SCOTUS to go ahead and take the case and get it out of the way.

Delaying the process is only going to cost taxpayers millions of dollars and businesses the same when the items they have implemented could possibly be reversed.

---------

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2011/04/supreme-court-rejects-bid-to-hear-health-care-challenge-this-term/1

The Supreme Court today rejected a request by Virginia officials to hear the constitutionality of the federal health-care overhaul, ensuring that the legal battle over the Obama-sponsored law will play out first in lower courts.

The high court's ultimate resolution of the law that continues to divide congressional Republicans and Democrats would now likely come in mid-2012, rather than the middle of this year, reports USA TODAY's Supreme Court correspondent Joan Biskupic.

The high court's order was issued with no recorded vote or public dissent. All nine justices apparently participated in the today's case.

It would have been highly unusual for the justices to taken up the dispute without at least one lower appeals court ruling first.

Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli had urged the justices to step in to resolve conflicting trial court opinions on the constitutionality of the provision that requires, beginning in 2014, that people buy insurance coverage or face a tax penalty.

Lower U.S. district courts have split on whether Congress had the authority to pass the individual-insurance mandate included in the sweeping legislation that became law in March 2010.

Appeals of those rulings are pending in several U.S. circuit courts of appeals, which is the second step of the three-tier federal judiciary.