Administration's top lawyer to argue for health law at appeals court hearing

The Hill: Administration Taps Top Lawyer For First Health Reform Appeal Hearing
The government's top lawyer will handle the first appeals court arguments on the constitutionality of the healthcare reform law - a sign of how seriously the administration takes lower court proceedings in a case with huge ramifications not only for the healthcare system, but for the 2012 election. Acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal will defend the law's individual mandate on Tuesday when Richmond's Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals takes up two challenges to the law. Court watchers say it's highly unusual for the government's highest ranking lawyer to be arguing a case before it reaches the Supreme Court (Pecquet, 5/8).

Richmond Times-Dispatch: Va. To Challenge U.S. On Health Law
The next round of the nation's great health-care debate begins this week in Richmond. And at this level, the success or failure of Virginia's legal challenge to President Barack Obama's landmark federal legislation will be decided by a three-judge panel randomly selected from the 14-member 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. To make things more challenging, the parties won't know which judges they'll face until they walk into court Tuesday morning (Nolan, 5/8).

---

This article was reprinted from kaiserhealthnews.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.