Mineola firm has part in Supreme Court case

Bobbing in the sea of legal papers filed in the dispute over the new national health care law is a 25-page brief filed by a Mineola law firm with fewer attorneys than the U.S. Supreme Court has justices.

Lally & Misir, a seven-member firm, filed a friend-of-the-court brief with the court on behalf of the Caesar Rodney Institute, a Delaware advocacy group against the Affordable Care Act that requires every American to buy medical insurance.

"We have a reputation for doing a lot of constitutional litigation, even though we're small," partner Deborah Misir said. "As far as we know, and we've checked extensively, we are the only Long Island firm involved in the appeals."

Misir, a graduate of the University of Minnesota law school, has been an attorney for 14 years and served with the U.S. Justice and Labor Departments. Grant Lally, a graduate of Boston University School of Law, has been prominent in Republican politics and ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 1994 against Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-Roslyn Heights).

"This is the most important case now before the U.S. Supreme Court and most important case dealing with the scope of federal power in a generation," Lally said. "I felt it was important that we contribute, to be part of this case and support the position of individual freedom and constraint on government power."

The attorneys said they were approached by Caesar Rodney and also filed papers on the group's behalf in the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Florida, which ruled the health law unconstitutional last year. Two other federal appeals courts upheld it, leading to the case before the nine justices of the Supreme Court this week.

Misir said the brief argues that Congress failed to explicitly point out that it was acting under its authority to regulate interstate commerce. "It is particularly troubling that Congress failed to make a more explicit statement in its findings underlying the act because historically health care and welfare is the domain of the states, not the federal government," it said.