U.S. lawyers pursue dismissal

Lawyers for the federal government have asked a judge to throw out a challenge by Nevada and 19 other states to the health care overhaul law.

The request came in a 79-page motion filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Pensacola, Fla.

That is the jurisdiction where 20 states seek to block implementation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, signed into law March 23 by President Barack Obama.

The challenge seeks to have the law declared unconstitutional in part because it includes a mandate that people buy some form of health insurance, a requirement opponents of the law say exceeds the authority of Congress.

Lawyers working on behalf the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services disagreed, saying in their motion that the mandate is critical for the law to achieve its goal of extending health insurance by 2019 to 32 million who cannot afford it.

“Plaintiffs have no standing to raise the claim, and even if they did, Supreme Court precedent establishes that regulation of economic decisions such as how to pay for medical services is valid under the Commerce and General Welfare Clauses of the Constitution,” the filing said.

Lawyers for the states have until Aug. 6 to respond. A judge will hear oral arguments Sept. 14.

On Thursday, Gov. Jim Gibbons, who has led the charge to include Nevada in the lawsuit against the health care law, blasted the arguments in the filing.

“Nothing in the Justice Department’s motion filed last night changes my view. We will prevail,” Gibbons said in a statement. “This is not acceptable, and it is illegal.”

The law has been the subject of contentious debate in Nevada. The latest salvos have come between Gibbons and Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto, who in March refused to follow Gibbons’ demands that she file a lawsuit on behalf of the state to block the law.

Masto argues the lawsuit is futile. Gibbons has said the health care law will increase the state’s Medicaid costs $613 million by 2019.

When Masto refused to take the case, Gibbons hired Las Vegas lawyer Mark Hutchison to work on a pro bono basis.

A filing fee of less than $5,000 came from donations from the public.

Critics said Gibbons’ insistence on filing the lawsuit was political; he was being challenged in the Republican primary by former federal Judge Brian Sandoval and seeking to rally conservative voters. Earlier this month Sandoval won the primary .

Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond, said he doesn’t think the states will prevail in their quest to block the law. But he said that the dismissal motion in Florida and the fact the U.S. Department of Justice sent five lawyers to a Virginia court to attend a 10-minute scheduling conference in a similar case showed the government isn’t taking any chances.

“They are doing everything they possibly can to win this case because the success of the presidency rides on it,” Tobias said. They are taking it very seriously.”

Contact reporter Benjamin Spillman at bspillman@reviewjournal.com or 702-477-3861.