The Case Against Obamacare May Fail One Of The Most Basic Tests Of A Lawsuit
BY IAN MILLHISER POSTED ON FEBRUARY 10, 2015 AT 3:37
King v. Burwell, a Supreme Court case seeking to defund much of the Affordable Care Act and strip health insurance from as many as 13 million people, is a project of the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), a conservative organization whose former chairman compared Obamacare to the Holocaust. CEI, does not hide this fact. To the contrary, its website announces that CEI is “coordinating and funding” the King litigation.
The Constitution, however, does not permit CEI to bring a lawsuit challenging Obamacare simply because they do not like the law. Rather, in order to invoke the jurisdiction of federal courts, CEI had to track down at least one plaintiff somewhere in the country who is actually injured in some way by the provisions of the Affordable Care Act CEI wishes to attack. Recent reporting by the Wall Street Journal and Mother Jones, however, indicate that CEI may have failed at this basic task when it assembled the four plaintiffs in King.
Article III of the Constitution requires plaintiffs challenging a federal law to show that they will actually be harmed in some way if the law remains in effect, a requirement known as “standing.” King challenges tax credits that help millions of individuals who purchased health insurance through health exchanges operated by the federal government afford their coverage. To establish standing, however, the lawyers behind this case offer a somewhat convoluted theory.
Although the Affordable Care Act requires most Americans to either carry health insurance or pay somewhat higher taxes, individuals are exempt from this requirement if the cost of the lowest-price coverage available to them exceeds 8 percent of their household income. The King plaintiffs claim that the cost of such a health plan is below 8 percent of their income if they are eligible for tax credits, but it is above 8 percent of their income if the tax credits are struck down. Thus, they claim, by rendering health care unaffordable for millions of Americans, they can also save themselves from complying with the law.
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2015/02/10/3621385/lawyers-fighting-kill-obamacare-may-not-plaintiffs-actually-hurt-law/
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