The attorney general of Virginia, Ken Cuccinelli, will file a lawsuit against the federal government should health care reform legislation be signed into law, his spokesman confirms to TPMDC.
The spokesman did not give details on what grounds Cuccinelli plans to challenge the law.
Last week, the Virginia state legislature passed a bill that declares residents exempt from any federal mandates requiring citizens to purchase health insurance. Similar legislation is pending, at various levels of seriousness, in some 34 other states.
In an op-ed last month, Cuccinelli praised the legislation for using the “vertical system of checks and balances between the states and the federal government” to challenge health care reform, which he believes is unconstitutional.
“This vertical system of checks and balances has been used too infrequently, but Virginia is now using it to declare our own law regarding health care freedom as a means to counteract an unconstitutional law (if it passes) at the federal level,” he said. “This would create a conflict of laws.”
(H/T National Review Online)
Late update: Cuccinelli’s spokesman emails TPMDC a letter Cuccinelli sent this afternoon to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The letter urges Pelosi not to use “deem and pass,” making the case that it would “raise grave constitutional questions.”
Based upon media interviews and statements which I have seen, you are considering this approach because it might somehow shield members of Congress from taking a recorded vote on an overwhelmingly unpopular Senate bill. This is an improper purpose under the bicameralism requirements of Article I, Section 7 of the U.S. Constitution, one of the purposes of which is to make our representatives fully accountable for their votes.
Furthermore, to be validly enacted, the Senate bill would have to be accepted by the House in a form that is word-for-word identical (Clinton v. City of New York, 524 U.S. 417 (1998)).
Should you employ the deem and pass tactic, you expose any act which may pass to yet another constitutional challenge.
