With historic legislation comes litigation challenging it, and no one expected the health care reform law to be an exception. After a bloody congressional battle over the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, President Obama signed it into law in March 2010–and the lawsuits began surfacing quickly.
A milestone in the litigation came Dec. 13, 2010, when a federal judge struck down a key provision of the law in Cuccinelli v. Sebelius, a challenge brought by the state of Virginia. Judge Henry Hudson of the Eastern District of Virginia struck down the health care law’s individual mandate to buy health insurance or risk fines, finding it falls outside the scope of the commerce clause and is therefore unconstitutional.
