Standing & Ripeness | The Incidental Economist

Standing & Ripeness

  May 17, 2011 at 11:21 am

  Kevin Outterson

The legal doctrines of standing and ripeness are based on good conservative principles, designed to weed out theoretical suits and cases that are filed too early. As I’ve argued before, states don’t have standing to sue on the individual mandate. Nor does the Florida ruling apply to states outside of the 11^th Circuit.

So when TPM reported today that the 6^th Circuit panel in the Thomas More case asked for briefing on standing and ripeness, I was not surprised, except to wonder why it took so long.

Practical result if the government won on this issue in all Circuits? The individual mandate cases would be delayed until 2014.

h/t to Don

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  Health Policy, Law

  Affordable Care Act, constitution, health reform, individual mandate, litigation, standing
- Comments (1)
- by pck on May 19th, 2011 at 08:02
  
  Volokh actually did a decent piece on this early this year (http://volokh.com/2010/04/02/standing-and-ripeness-issues-in-the-lawsuits-against-obamacare/)
  
  Interesting read if you want to get some basics before we check out the briefs.
  
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