Earlier today, Governor de Jongh announced that the Virgin Islands has joined a legal brief the state of Maryland filed with the U.S. Supreme Court in support of President Obama's landmark health care reform law.

Virgin Islands Attorney General Vincent Frazer, along with attorneys general from California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Vermont, and the District of Columbia, joined Maryland's amicus brief. The states and territory are advocating the nation's high court find the Affordable Care Act—and specifically its mandate for all Americans to purchase health insurance—as constitutional. They ask the Supreme Court to invalidate a lower court's decision striking down the law.

Governor de Jongh said the Affordable Care Act is critical to his administration's larger efforts to reform the territory's health care delivery system, lower costs of coverage and improve the health of Virgin Islanders. 

“Like many other parts of the country, the people of the Virgin Islands are relying on the Affordable Care Act to help us solve a public health crisis, namely the large number of uninsured and under-insured citizens in our territory,” he said.

“President Obama's reform of health care is vital if we are to succeed in insuring all our citizens and bringing down the costs associated with health care,” he added.

The states represented in the amicus brief “have a strong interest in protecting and promoting the health, safety, and welfare of their citizens, an interest that the Affordable Care Act advances in vitally important ways,” the brief reads. 

They have “made determined efforts to address the extraordinary problems associated with the current system of healthcare delivery in the United States, including spiraling costs, limitations on the availability of insurance coverage, and restricted access to medical services.”

The brief goes on to argue that Congress was within its power when it enacted the law because health care is a national concern and the industry constitutes nearly one-fifth of the nation's economy. The reforms adopted when President Obama signed the bill into law in March of 2010 “do not represent an incursion on state sovereignty or an encroachment on state regulatory authority,” the brief argues.

The U.S. Supreme Court is set to hear arguments on the law near the end of March.

Governor Chris Gregoire of Washington State has filed a separate amicus brief in support of the law. So has the attorney general of Massachusetts, in which she argues that state's experience with its own 2006 health care law—passed under former Governor Mitt Romney and also including an individual mandate—validates the federal law. That state's largest insurer, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, also filed a brief with the high court calling the individual mandate “essential.”

The constitutionality of the landmark piece of legislation has been challenged by 26 states, which argue that Congress overstepped its authority when they included the provision for an individual mandate.

While the individual mandate does not apply to the Virgin Islands because of its status as a U.S. territory, Governor de Jongh, in joining the brief, is championing the larger effort to ensure the whole bill is not struck down by the court.