Justice department moves to dismiss Kinder's health care legal challenge

The U.S. Department of Justice filed a motion in federal court Tuesday to dismiss Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder's lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the new health care law, which may now linger for months before a judge makes a ruling.

The motion argues that Kinder does not have standing to file the lawsuit and asks U.S. District Judge Rodney Sippel to dismiss the case. Kinder has 30 days to respond and he intends file a motion in February with the court.

"We'll be arguing that they deny the motion to dismiss," Kinder said.

Kinder said he was not surprised by the motion to dismiss, considering that's what the Justice Department has done in four states that have challenged the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which was signed into law by President Barack Obama in March. The court did dismiss in two of the cases, but ruled against the government in the other two.

What did surprise Kinder was that the Justice Department's motion was based on standing.

"This tells me the Department of Justice and the Obama administration are just phoning it in," Kinder said. "They did not engage us on the substantive issues in this case. They did in the other cases, but not ours. Other states have easily cleared the hurdle of standing."

Kinder argues in his lawsuit that the federal health care law is overreaching and that it isn't constitutional to force people to buy health insurance. The government had until Tuesday to respond to Kinder's lawsuit, which he filed in July at the Rush H. Limbaugh Sr. U.S. Courthouse.

A total of 26 states are now challenging the legality of what critics call "Obama-care" by joining Florida's federal lawsuit. Recent states that joined the lawsuit include Iowa, Ohio, Kansas, Wyoming, Wisconsin and Maine.

The lawsuit there challenges not only the law's requirement that individuals buy health insurance or face a penalty, but also its substantial and costly Medicaid expansion. The biggest changes, including mandatory health insurance and insurance exchanges with subsidized premiums, are not set to take effect until 2014.

In December, a Virginia federal judge found part of the health care reform law to be an unconstitutional exercise of Congress' powers. Kinder believes his case may end up being combined with the other lawsuits and expects the health care law ultimately will be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.

In one of the cases where the Justice Department made a motion to dismiss a judge took six months before rendering a decision. Kinder said he is not optimistic that a ruling on the government's motion will happen more quickly here.

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