New look at health care? [Supreme Court re-review of Obamacare?]

SCOTUSblog ^ | Mon, October 1st, 2012 9:41 am | Lyle Denniston

The Supreme Court opened its new Term on Monday by asking the federal government to offer its views on whether the way should be cleared for new constitutional challenges to the federal health care law — including a new protest against the individual mandate that the Court had upheld last June. The request for the government’s views came in response to a rehearing request by a religious-oriented institution, Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va. The university’s earlier petition was simply denied in June, so it asked the Court to reconsider and wipe out a lower court ruling in order to revive the university’s religious challenges to both the individual mandate and the separate insurance coverage mandate for employers. There is also another challenge to the employer mandate, which did not figure in the Court’s decision last Term.
The order came amid a long list of orders on cases that arrived at the Court over the summer. There were no new grants. Among other actions, the Court invited the government to offer its reaction to several new cases.
The U.S. Solicitor General was invited to advise the Court on whether it should hear Arzoumanian, et al., v. Munchener…(docket 12-9) on the insurance claims of victims of the Armenian genocide; three related cases on class-action lawsuits involving securities fraud (dockets 12-79, 12-86 and 12-88), and on Young v. Fitzpatrick (docket 11-1485), a case testing legal immunity for police officers working for an Indian tribe.
The Court summarily affirmed lower court rulings rejecting claims of “packing” of minority voters into new districts to diminish their political strength — a question of racial gerrymandering (Backus v. South Carolina, 11-1404) — as well as claims of partisan gerrymandering in redistricting (Radogno v. Illinois Board of Elections, 11-1127). The Court provided no explanation for its action.
(NOTE TO READERS: This post will be updated and expanded following this morning’s oral arguments. Posts also will appear later today on those arguments.)