In an unanimous opinion today, the United States Court of Appeals for
the Fourth Circuit held that the Commonwealth of Virginia has no
standing to sue to block the Affordable Care Act. The decision in effect
vacates Judge Hudson's decision last December striking down the
individual mandate as unconstitutional.

"Standing" is the doctrine under Article III of the U.S. Constitution
which limits the jurisdiction of federal courts to actual "cases or
controversies." In practice, this means that a plaintiff must
demonstrate that (1) it has suffered an injury in fact; (2) caused
somehow by the conduct complained of; and (3) a favorable judicial
ruling will likely redress that injury. Virginia attempted in effect to
create that injury by passing a law the day after the ACA was signed,
the Virginia Health Care Freedom Act (VHFCA), stating that "no resident
of this Commonwealth . . . shall be required to obtain or maintain a
policy of individual insurance coverage.”

But that, writes Judge Diane Gribbon Motz for the panel, was not enough
for Virginia to claim any injury here. See, states can't sue on behalf
of their citizens to protect them from the federal government, and this
statute was nothing more than a "smokescreen" to attempt to do so. This,
gang, is Federal Supremacy 101:

Contrary to Virginia’s arguments, the mere existence of a state law
like the VHCFA does not license a state to mount a judicial challenge to
any federal statute with which the state law assertedly conflicts.
Rather, only when a federal law interferes with a state’s exercise of
its sovereign “power to create and enforce a legal code” does it inflict
on the state the requisite injury-in-fact....

[T]he VHCFA regulates nothing and provides for the administration
of no state program. Instead, it simply purports to immunize Virginia
citizens from federal law. In doing so, the VHCFA reflects no exercise
of “sovereign power,” for Virginia lacks the sovereign authority to
nullify federal law....

Moreover, the individual mandate does not affect Virginia’s ability
to enforce the VHCFA. Rather, the Constitution itself withholds from
Virginia the power to enforce the VHCFA against the federal government.
Given this fact, the VHCFA merely declares, without legal effect, that
the federal government cannot apply insurance mandates to Virginia’s
citizens. This non-binding declaration does not create any genuine
conflict with the individual mandate, and thus creates no sovereign
interest capable of producing injury-in-fact.

Judge Motz's opinion explains the dangers of Virginia's approach:

To permit a state to litigate whenever it enacts a statute
declaring its opposition to federal law, as Virginia has in the VHCFA,
would convert the federal judiciary into a “forum” for the vindication
of a state’s “generalized grievances about the conduct of government.”
Under Virginia’s standing theory, a state could acquire standing to
challenge any federal law merely by enacting a statute -- even an
utterly unenforceable one -- purporting to prohibit the application of
the federal law. For example, Virginia could enact a statute declaring
that “no Virginia resident shall be required to pay Social Security
taxes” and proceed to file a lawsuit challenging the Social Security
Act. Or Virginia could enact a statute codifying its constitutional
objection to the CIA’s financial reporting practices and proceed to
litigate the sort of “generalized grievance[]” about federal
administration that the Supreme Court has long held to be “committed to
the . . . political process.”

And because Virginia had no standing to sue, there was no reason to
reach the merits and decide whether the individual mandate was indeed
constitutional.

Swiped from KOS

--
I'd much rather be a champion of the powerless than a lickspittle of the
powerful.