March 24 (Bloomberg) -- Lawsuits by 14 states seeking to scuttle health-care legislation signed by President Barack Obama have little chance of success in the face of the broad powers
granted to Congress by the U.S. Constitution, scholars said.

Thirteen states led by Florida said the law signed yesterday illegally places a fiscal burden on their cash- strapped budgets with an expansion of state-run Medicaid.
Virginia filed a separate suit contending the “individual
mandate” requiring people to buy health insurance exceeds
Congress’s powers.

“It’s unlikely to succeed,” said Jack Balkin, a professor at Yale Law School in New Haven, Connecticut, of the effort by the states, equating the new law to Congress’s power to levy
taxes. “Congress has the ability to force people to pay taxes.
If it is a constitutional tax, then that is the ballgame.”

The $940 billion health-care overhaul subsidizes coverage for uninsured Americans, and is financed by Medicare cuts to hospitals and fees or taxes on insurers, drugmakers, medical-
device companies and Americans earning more than $200,000 a
year.

Many of the changes enacted by the bill, such as requiring most people to have health insurance and employers to provide coverage, will take at least two years to go into effect.

13 States

The 13 states joining in the lawsuit filed in federal court in Pensacola, Florida, claim that “the act represents an unprecedented encroachment on the liberty of individuals living
in the plaintiffs’ respective states, by mandating that all
citizens and legal residents of the United States have
qualifying health care coverage or pay a tax penalty.”

Joining Florida in the suit are Alabama, Colorado, Idaho, Louisiana, Michigan, Nebraska, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah and Washington. Along with the
separate suit by Virginia, filed in federal court in Richmond,
the states asked the courts to declare the law unconstitutional
and seek to bar its enforcement.

The complaints were filed moments after Obama, a Democrat, signed the legislation, which totals more than 2,400 pages.

“This is a continuation of politics by a national political faction that lost in Congress,” said Aziz Huq, a University of Chicago law professor who predicted the lawsuits
will likely fail.

Twelve of the state attorneys general participating in the Florida case are Republicans. Buddy Caldwell of Louisiana is the lone Democrat. Virginia’s lawsuit was filed by Ken Cuccinelli, a
Republican.

‘Ruin the State’

The health-care overhaul will allow 16 million more Americans to qualify for Medicaid coverage, according to an estimate by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. It will
cost the states billions of dollars to administer, according to
the states that sued.

Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum said at a press conference yesterday that the act’s legislative mandates will cost his state billions of dollars. The legislation “will ruin
the state financially,” said McCollum, who predicted the
lawsuits would end up before the U.S. Supreme Court.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, told reporters yesterday that the legislation was carefully written and predicted it would withstand the legal challenges.

“Lawsuits follow every bill that’s passed,” she said. “So what else is new? But this bill was written with care.”

The states claim the legislation will deprive them of sovereignty and violates the Constitution’s Tenth Amendment, which says powers not granted to the national government are
reserved to the states, or the people. In its lawsuit, Virginia
specifically attacked the new law’s requirement that Americans
obtain health coverage, calling it unconstitutional.

‘What Virginia Says’

Charles Fried, a professor at Harvard Law School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, disagreed.

“As long as the federal law is independently constitutional, it doesn’t matter what Virginia says,” said Fried, who served as solicitor general, the government’s chief
lawyer before the U.S. Supreme Court, during the administration
of President Ronald Reagan. “It’s like Virginia saying we don’t
have to pay income tax.”

The Florida lawsuit claims the reform contains “unfunded mandates” and is too financially burdensome at a time when states already need to cut their budgets. The attorneys general
also said the law imposes an illegal tax on people “for their
failure or refusal to do anything other than to exist and reside
in the United States.”

Decades of Precedent

Balkin said throwing out the health care law may require overturning decades of court precedent leading back to the “New Deal” legislation of President Franklin Roosevelt.

Randy Barnett, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, said today the Supreme Court may conclude that federal legislators exceeded the bounds of their
constitutional mandate with the new law.

“This claim of power by Congress under the commerce clause goes beyond any claim that has been upheld by the Supreme Court in the past,” Barnett said in a phone interview. “Congress has
never mandated that private individuals enter into a contract
with a private company.”

Barnett drew a distinction between the health-insurance mandate and laws compelling the purchase of auto insurance. Such regulations are enacted by states, not the federal government,
and regulate the act of choosing to drive, he said.

Robert Kaufman, a public policy professor at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California, who calls himself a “fervent opponent” of the new health law, said chances are slim that
litigation by the states will reverse it.

The Issue

“The issue is whether this is constitutional, not whether this is wise,” said Kaufman, who is also an attorney. Supreme Court decisions since Roosevelt have tended to support a broad
reading of the Constitution in allowing the federal government
to regulate interstate commerce, Kaufman said.

The Supreme Court in 2005 cited the Constitution’s Commerce Clause in upholding a federal ban on marijuana, showing the reach of that provision in the face of state laws allowing its
use for medical reasons, said Peter Edelman, a constitutional
law professor at Georgetown.

“Bottom line, I don’t think there is any substance to any of the arguments,” said Edelman, who was an assistant secretary at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services during the
administration of President Bill Clinton. “But you always have
to put a small asterisk, given the current membership of the
court.”

‘Smart Money’

Georgetown’s Barnett said that while assuming the high court will uphold a congressional act is typically the “safe bet,” it isn’t always the right one. Barnett argued for the
losing side in the 2005 marijuana case before the high court.

“The smart money is correct, right up until the time the Supreme Court does something different,” Barnett said.

The cases are State of Florida v. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 10-cv-00091, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida (Pensacola); Commonwealth of
Virginia v. Sebelius, 10cv00188, U.S. District Court for the
Eastern District of Virginia (Richmond).