Legal News

State AGs File Suit; New Health Care Front Opens in Florida

By Ashby Jones

If you pass it, we will sue.

That was the threat posed by a handful of state attorneys general over the weekend and on Monday. The “it” they were referring to, of course, was the health care bill. They threatened to sue shortly after President Obama signed the bill into law.

Well, shortly before noon on Tuesday, Obama indeed signed the bill into law. And what happened? As predicted, a bunch of state AGs filed suit in Florida federal court. Click here for the complaint, which lists as defendants HHS Secretary, Kathleen Sebelius, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and Labor Secretary Hilda Solis. Click here for all earlier LB posts on the health-care bill and the Constitution.

The suit makes a variety of assertions:

First, it alleges that Congress, in passing the bill, overstepped its authority; that the Commerce Clause of the Constitution does not grant Congress the power to pass so sweeping a law;

Second, the plaintiffs allege something we, frankly, didn’t see coming — that the bill deprives the states a “Republican Form of Government,” in violation of Article IV, Section 4 of the Constitution;

Third, it asserts that in passing the law, the feds have encroached on state sovereignty, in violation of the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution;

Fourth, it alleges that the provision of the bill mandating that all Americans purchase health care or be fined constitutes an unconstitutional tax that violates Article I, Sections 2 and 9.

Given the legislative doggedness it took to get the bill passed, don’t look for congressional Democrats or folks from the Executive Branch to roll over. Many constitutional scholars have questions as to whether the law passes muster; others, Yale’s Jack Bialkin and Irvine’s Erwin Chemerinsky among them, feel that it does.

For a spirited defense of the constitutionality of the bill, click here for a paper on the topic from Simon Lazarus and the American Constitution Society.

Photo: Getty Images

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on March 23, 2010 (boomark / email).