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D.C. Attorney General Irv Nathan announced today that the District was adding its name to a brief submitted by 11 states and the Virgin Islands backing the constitutionality of President Obama’s healthcare reform law.

According to a press release from Nathan’s office:

The brief contends that the healthcare law is constitutionally valid, and that the federal commerce power, by design, includes the power to regulate individual conduct so long as the individual’s conduct, combined with others’ conduct, may have a significant effect on interstate commerce. The brief notes that the individual States and the District “have each 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,” and that state-by-state “efforts cannot fully counteract the force of inexorable national trends driven by problems that are fundamentally interstate in nature.”

The Supreme Court has scheduled three days of oral arguments for late March on the controversial reform bill. Maryland finds itself alongside the District in supporting the healthcare reform, while Virginia and Florida led the charge in filing suit against it in March 2010. Last September, a federal appeals court tossed a challenge filed to the law by Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli. A few weeks later, he appealed the decision to the Supreme Court.

The D.C. Council recently passed the law needed to establish the health insurance exchange that is at the heart of the reform legislation, joining 15 states in moving to implement the reforms.