Judge denies extension for federal response to health lawsuit

Legal Newsline: "A federal judge in Florida is not granting the federal government an extension of time to respond to a challenge to health care reform made by 20 states. U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson said there is no need for a delay, considering the federal government has already responded to Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli's challenge in a Virginia federal court. Seven states joined in an amended complaint filed May 14. The federal government has 33 days after that date to file a motion to dismiss the complaint, which it has done in Virginia" (O'Brien, 6/1).

KLAS (Las Vegas): Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons "says he is standing up for what he believes by suing the federal government over the new health care bill. He's so opposed to it that it is now in red letters on the State of Nevada's website. ... [H]e has put a growing ticker of the health care costs onto the state's website. ... The governor chose to use free counsel to sue after the attorney general chose not to get involved. Speaker Barbara Buckley is upset the governor's personal opinion could be seen as the feeling of the entire state. She says the website should be a non-partisan portal for business, tourism and outreach" (6/1).

Finally, in other legal action, The San Francisco Examiner reports that "San Francisco might not even bother filing a response" to acting U.S. Solicitor General Neal Kumar Katyal's brief "urging" the U.S. Supreme Court to deny a legal challenge to the city's requirement that local employers pay something for their workers' health coverage. A suit challenging the law was filed in 2006 by the Golden Gate Restaurant Association (Sherbert, 6/1).

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This article was reprinted from khn.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.