A Win for Congress and a Setback for ObamaCare

A court rules that the House can sue the administration for its end-run on spending

When the House of Representatives filed a lawsuit last year contesting President Obama’s implementation of ObamaCare, critics variously labeled it as “ridiculous,” “frivolous” and certain to be dismissed. Federal District Judge Rosemary Collyer apparently doesn’t agree. On Wednesday she ruled against the Obama administration, concluding that the House has standing to assert an injury to its institutional power, and that its lawsuit doesn’t involve—as the administration had asserted—a “political question” incapable of judicial resolution.

The House lawsuit involves two core allegations. First, the House contends that the executive branch has spent billions of dollars on ObamaCare’s “cost-sharing” subsidy, even though Congress hasn’t appropriated money for it. The House says the administration violated Article I, Section nine of the Constitution, which declares: “No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations Made by Law.”

Second, the House asserts that the administration has failed to faithfully execute ObamaCare’s employer mandate by issuing regulations lowering the percentage of employees who must be offered insurance and delaying the mandate’s effective date for two years.

The most specious but widespread objection to the lawsuit was that Congress, as an institution, is incapable of suffering an injury serious enough to establish “standing” to sue. Critics argued that, because the Supreme Court in Raines v. Byrd (1997) denied standing to a group of six congressmen who sued President Bill Clinton over his use of the line-item veto, there is no such thing as legislative standing.

U.S. District Judge Rosemary M. Collyer AP

But Raines never foreclosed legislative standing; it merely denied standing to six disgruntled members of Congress who had lost a political battle with their own colleagues. Raines didn’t involve a claim of institutional injury. The House lawsuit, by contrast, was authorized by a majority vote and does claim an institutional injury. In the words of Judge Collyer, the “plaintiff here is the House of Representatives, duly authorized to sue as an institution, not individual members as in Raines. . . . That important fact clearly distinguishes this case.”

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Standing Up for the Constitution

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