In June 2012, the Institute for Justice, on behalf of a group of medical professionals who were all trying to open practices in the state, filed a lawsuit claiming Virginia’s certificate of need program violates the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution because it unduly burdens interstate commerce. That argument, and the case, were dismissed by a district judge in September 2012.
Now, a three-judge panel of the Fourth Circuit has reinstated the case, arguing the district judge must consider the case and whether a certificate of need program places out-of-state healthcare providers at a competitive disadvantage and thereby violates the commerce clause.
“The district court gave a serious claim the back of its hand,” Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III wrote in his concurring opinion, according to an Institute of Justice news release. “This was error.”
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