9 states, D.C. defend healthcare reform's constitutionality

California Attorney General Kamala D. Harris has filed a brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit supporting the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, and urging the court to affirm the states' rights to protect the health and safety of its citizens.

"The law strikes an appropriate, constitutional balance between federal and state authority over the healthcare system," Harris noted. "It establishes federal standards, backed by federal funding, to expand access to affordable coverage while conferring considerable latitude on states to design systems that work best for their citizens."

Harris, joined by nine other attorneys general, asserted in the brief that the federal healthcare law bolsters, rather than usurps, state authority to address problems in the national healthcare economy that the states cannot solve effectively on their own.

According to the brief, the healthcare law solves a national problem in a way that gives greater power to states by building on a successful model of cooperative federalism. The brief also stated that the framework established by the law "empowers states to create enduring solutions to those problems, and to do so with federal support."

The attorneys general argued that the minimum coverage provision is a constitutional and integral element of Congress' interstate solution to the healthcare crisis. California was joined in the brief by Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Iowa, Maryland, New York, Oregon, Vermont and Washington, D.C.

The Eighth Circuit Court case is Kinder v. Geithner, No. 11-1973, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit.

Read the brief by clicking here.