Justice Department asks court to throw out states' lawsuit challenging health overhaul

The Associated Press reports that the Justice Department filed a motion in Florida late Wednesday asking a "federal judge to dismiss a lawsuit by 20 states challenging President Barack Obama's health care overhaul." The states are arguing that the federal government cannot require individuals to buy health insurance, a key provision of the new health law.

"Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum said Thursday that the government's defenses clash with comments Obama made during the health care debate, 'including the president's insistence on national television that the purchase mandate was absolutely not a tax.' In its arguments for the motion to dismiss, the Justice Department says the requirement to buy coverage is an exercise of Congress' constitutional power to tax and spend. 'The Supreme Court has long held that an exercise of this power is valid, even if it has a regulatory function, even if the revenue purpose is subsidiary, and even if the moneys raised are 'negligible,'' wrote a team of government lawyers led by Assistant Attorney General Tony West."  The judge set a Sept. 14 hearing date on the motion to dismiss (Kaczor, 6/17).

Politico Pulse adds that the federal response says "the plaintiffs don't yet have standing because the mandate has not taken effect, but even if they did, Congress has the authority under the commerce clause (the 'necessary and proper' clause) and its power to tax 'to promote the general welfare.' The last point is likely to reignite the debate over whether the individual mandate penalty is a tax -- and one that would surely hit those making under $250,000 that President Obama said he wouldn't tax. The court filing hedges that argument by calling it a tax with a 'regulatory function' based on a volitional event" (Kliff and Haberkorn, 6/17).