Health Suits Raise Questions About Court Partisanship

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PENSACOLA, Fla. — With a loose web of conservative plaintiffs leading the charge, and judicial rulings breaking thus far along ideological lines, the drive to scuttle the Obama health care law is once again highlighting the role of partisanship in America’s courts.

Legal scholars say there is nothing new and nothing particularly insidious about the use of the federal courts to revisit divisive policy debates once they have moved beyond Congress.

What is different about the health care cases, they say, is that multiple filings in diverse districts have resulted in a constitutional conflict over a landmark law even before it has taken full effect. Ideologically driven disagreements are rare among judges at the lower court level, they say, but do arise in cases where the issues are novel and highly charged.

On Thursday morning, the battle moves here to Pensacola, where attorneys general and governors from 20 states — all Republicans but one — face off against the Justice Department in a hearing before Judge Roger Vinson of Federal District Court. Judge Vinson has been hostile to the law in preliminary opinions and could become the second judge to find that a central provision is unconstitutional.

Full story: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/16/health/policy/16health.html