Obamacare Should Skip the Appeals Courts and Go Straight to the Supremes

There are processes by which a federal court case can skip the lower courts and be heard directly by the Supreme Court. There are already four different opinions on Obamacare in the federal courts, ranging from "it's all okay" to "it's all void". The appeals process will not make any of this any clearer. An expedited appeal to the Supreme Court should be pursued so we can stop wasting time at the lower court levels and get this thing decided before it does irreparable damage to the country.

Ed Morrissey tells us what the political impact could be of an early court decision:

An immediate grant of certiorari could mean a decision by this summer, while the trek through the appellate courts could postpone any final consideration of PPACA until 2013 or 2014, when the law comes fully into effect. Even if the Supreme Court waited until its next session to accept an expedited case, the decision would still come before the 2012 election. A Supreme Court ruling that supports the mandate still leaves President Obama and his Democratic allies with an unpopular bill under political siege in the Republican-controlled House, no worse or better off than before a final court ruling. Such a ruling might even provide more motivation to the opposition to gain control of the Senate and White House to reverse the PPACA entirely through legislative action.

An adverse ruling by the Supreme Court before the 2012 election would be an unequivocal disaster, however. President Obama and his fellow Democrats spent almost half of the 111th congressional session fiddling on health care while the economy burned, which destroyed their credibility in the midterm elections last fall. They insisted that their work would pass constitutional muster even as the mandate fueled the rise of the Tea Party and came to embody all of the arrogance and elitism of big-government, nanny-state. A ruling that overturns even just the mandate means that they tossed away their House majority and all of their political momentum for nothing.

What’s more, it will increase the prestige and the credibility of those who fought the passage of the PPACA and who later vowed to repeal it entirely and start reform over from scratch. And that could come just as President Obama runs for re-election and Democrats desperately try to preserve their Senate majority as they defend 13 more seats than Republicans. Not only would their work be discredited, so would their entire approach to governance.

It only takes four justices to grant an expedited appeal and I would think all four reliably conservative justices would see the value in that. It is expected that both the Virginia and Florida plaintiffs will ask for such an appeal.

There's no reason to let this thing slog through the lower courts and all the conflicting opinions, a process that could drag out a final decision until well after Obamacare's full implementation. An early decision could stop the bleeding (assuming the court follows the Constitution).