If the law is upheld, the justices could reasonably expect challenges to continue on different constitutional grounds – including the free exercise of religion, a factor in eight states' current lawsuits against the law's contraception mandate.
The result could be “a repetition of what we've seen so far,” with various lawsuits advancing in federal court seeking “review of the legality of certain provisions” in the health care law.
“There are lots of concerns with this legislation,” Fr. Araujo said. “Do we want to have another 'go-around' in the not-too-distant future, on other elements?”
Health care, the priest and professor noted, is a pressing issue that seriously affects millions of people.
But the Obama administration, he suggested, should not have attempted to solve it in a manner that was both constitutionally questionable and morally provocative.
Although the Church regards health care as a right that should be secured for all members of society, opinions differ as to how this should be achieved in practice. The Catholic notion of “subsidiarity” requires that problems be solved by the lowest level of competent authority.
Some Catholic critics of the health care law have invoked this concept as a criticism of the federal health care reform, which they say could have been better handled by the individual states.
“I think in its own way, the U.S. Constitution – under the Tenth Amendment – in part addresses this important concept of subsidiarity,” Fr. Araujo said, citing the provision by which the powers not given to the federal government by the constitution “are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.”
“What might be proper for Florida may not work in California,” the Loyola University professor noted. “The states do have a proper, lawful role in determining what is good and what is not for their citizenry. That's how I see the subsidiarity rule playing out in the U.S. Constitution.”
“The program Massachusetts legislated a few years ago is not without its problems or faults,” Fr. Araujo observed, recalling legislation signed by then-Governor Mitt Romney. “But the state was addressing the issue of health care for its citizens.”
CNA also spoke on March 29 with Professor Michael Scaperlanda, who teaches at the University of Oklahoma and contributes to the Catholic law blog “Mirror of Justice.”
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Scaperlanda has criticized the federal government's individual insurance mandate as unconstitutional. On Thursday, however, he held off from making any predictions as to whether the health care law would be upheld in part or in full by the Supreme Court.
But he noted that there were good reasons for Catholics to prefer state-level solutions to the problem of securing health care for all.
At the state level, he noted, a requirement for individuals to purchase insurance could be squared with both the Constitution and Catholic social teaching.
If the federal health care law is overturned, Scaperlanda is hopeful that solutions for the uninsured, and those with preexisting conditions, can be found at a lower level of authority.
“One reason would be, that our state legislators are much more accessible to us than our federal legislators,” he explained.
“I'm Facebook friends with several of my state legislators; I can have conversations with them. They're much more in tune to the values of people in the community than people in Washington.”