 Image: Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States |
A rare bright spot for the Obama administration this past week: a legal review of the healthcare reform law was rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Granted, it wasn’t necessarily a referendum on the merits (or lack thereof) of the changes to the health insurance plan market in America. Instead, the challenge–filed by a conservative legal group in California–was denied because similar legal challenges are already winding their way through the lower courts. Moreover, the individual mandate provision at the centerpiece of the lawsuit is not scheduled to take effect until 2014.
Interestingly, both Justices Elena Kagan (a former Department of Justice lawyer for the current administration, although she didn’t participate in healthcare reform-related litigation) and Clarence Thomas (whose wife, Virginia, is a high-profile activist seeking repeal of the law) did not exclude themselves from the decision.
