Supreme Court Will Hear Health Care Arguments Next March

The Supreme Court announced Monday that they will hear arguments regarding the constitutionality of the health care reform law March 26th through the 28th.

On March 26th, the court will determine whether or not they will even be able to take on the challenges to the law. Under the Anti-Injunction Act, Americans are not allowed to take legal action against a tax until it is actually levied. Since the bill’s most controversial provision, the individual mandate, slaps a tax on those who opt to not purchase health insurance, the Court may be barred for issuing a ruling until the tax goes into effect in three years. 

Presuming the Court will be able to proceed, they will hear arguments over the individual mandate on March 27th and new Medicaid requirements on March 28th.

Justice Breyer: Politics Never Sway Supreme Court

Associate Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer told the Senate Judiciary Committee Wednesday that politics plays less of a role in Supreme Court decisions than many in the public think.

“When you put on the robes, you take off the politics,” Breyer, sitting alongside fellow Justice Antonin Scalia, said during a hearing.

The committee members’ questions varied from types of cases heard to whether or not supreme court cases should be videotaped for public consumption.

To the later question, proposed by Senator Blumenthal (D-CT), Scalia responded that despite the argument that the videos would educate the people, he believed most people would only see a 30 second tape that “would not be representative of what we do.”

Supreme Court Starts New Term Today

* Shift in focus from corporate law to criminal justice and First Amendment cases - and challenge to 2010 health care law, if they decide to hear it (likely) - will be huge, and could decide Obama’s re-election

* Fun stuff to be decided:

* Whether police need a warrant to put a GPS on a car and monitor movements over several weeks?

* Does the First Amendment allow the govt to regulate cursing and nudity on broadcast TV (ie celebs on award shows and yes - all the way back to female buttocks on NYPD Blue)

* Whether a ministerial exception bans suits between religious groups and employees whose work includes religious duties - can you be fired by a church

* Does the Fourth Amendment allow jails to conduct strip searches of all people detained for minor offenses without individualized suspicion?

* Can the missed deadline, the result of a mix up in a law firm’s mailroom, be suspended when the inmate was blameless and a court clerk who received a court order marked “return to sender” did nothing to set things right? Upshot - death row inmate lost chance to appeal decision against him because lawyers missed a filing deadline

* Do eyewitness ids made in suggestive settings require judicial scrutiny when the police were not responsible for the suggestiveness?