Supreme Court rejects request to hear Va. health care case

WASHINGTON —The Supreme Court rejected a request Monday by Virginia officials to hear the constitutionality of the federal health-care overhaul, ensuring that the legal battle over the Obama-sponsored law will play out first in lower courts.

The high court's order in Virginia v. Sebelius was issued with no recorded vote or public dissent. It would have been highly unusual for the justices to taken up the dispute without at least one lower appeals court ruling first.

The high court's resolution of the law that continues to divide congressional Republicans and Democrats would now likely come in mid-2012, rather than the middle of this year.
The high court's order in Virginia v. Sebelius was issued with no recorded vote or public dissent. It would have been highly unusual for the justices to taken up the dispute without at least one lower appeals court ruling first. In the few instances when the justices have intervened early, it has been on a matter of imperative public importance and urgency, such as in the 1974 case involving President Nixon's Watergate tapes.

Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli had urged the justices to step in to resolve conflicting trial court opinions on the constitutionality of the provision that requires, beginning in 2014, that people buy insurance coverage or face a tax penalty.

Lower U.S. district courts have split on whether Congress had the authority to pass the individual-insurance mandate included in the legislation that became law in March 2010. Appeals of those rulings are pending in several U.S. circuit courts of appeals, which is the second step of the three-tier federal judiciary.

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