The Supreme Court, reacting to the widespread interest in the new cases testing the constitutionality of the federal health care law, now provides a page on its website where all of the filings before the Court will appear. It can be found here. It will be updated as the six cases already filed develop further. As of now, there is no scheduled date for the Court to begin considering which, if any, of the petitions it will review. The posting of such filings on the Court’s own site is rare, but not unprecedented.
Kathleen L. Arberg, the Court’s public information officer, said in response to questions that the posting was done on the initiative of the Court Clerk’s Office. “Similar postings have occurred before in cases that generated heightened public interest,” Arberg said. She mentioned, in particular, the massive test case (12 separate appeals) in 2003, involving the constitutionality of major provisions of a 2002 federal campaign finance regulation law (McConnell v. Federal Election Commission was the lead case), and the historic fight in 2000 over the Presidency that the Court decided in Bush v. Gore. The Court’s website also contains filings in so-called “Original” cases — those in which the Court itself acts as the originating Court, under specific grants of authority in the Constitution (typically, legal disputes between two or more states).
As indicated, the Court site will contain links to the papers filed before the Court. A very useful website, containing links to filings in these cases in the lower courts as well as in the Supreme Court, is the Affordable Care Act litigation blog of Santa Clara University law professor Brad Joondeph.
Of course, the filings will be covered, and linked, on SCOTUSblog as they develop. You can find our coverage of the health care cases at this link, and our summer symposium on the constitutionality of the Affordable Health Care Act here.
CLICK HERE FOR FULL VERSION OF THIS STORY