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HOUSE FILES CHALLENGE OVER THE CHANGES TO THE AFFORDABLE CARE ACT

800px-Capitol_Building_Full_ViewToday, we filed our complaint United States House of Representatives v. Burwell (Case 1:14-cv-01967), in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. The House’s complaint contains eight counts concerning constitutional and statutory violations of law related to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA). There are a myriad of unilateral amendments to this Act, ordered by President Obama’s Administration, which could be the subject of a challenge, and there are a number of changes that are already being litigated, including King v. Burwell, which has been accepted by the Supreme Court for review. The House’s complaint, however, focuses on the Administration’s usurpation not only of the House’s Article I legislative authority, but also of the defining “power of purse.” Both of these powers were placed exclusively in Article I by the Framers of our Constitution. These constitutional and statutory claims are highly illustrative of the current conflict between the branches over the basic principles of the separation of powers. The House’s complaint seeks to reaffirm the clear constitutional lines of separation between the branches – a doctrine that is the very foundation of our constitutional system of government. To put it simply, the complaint focuses on the means rather than ends. The complaint is posted below.

This is not a new question. Indeed, in some respects, it is the original question. The Framers were well aware that governmental actors would seek to aggrandize power within the system the Framers had created. In Federalist 51, James Madison warned that “[i]n framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.” Accordingly, the Framers put into place what Madison called “the necessity of auxiliary precautions” to maintain the balance of powers within the system. Such precautions are of little value absent judicial review to maintain the lines of separation; to arrest what Madison called the “encroaching nature” of power.

Once again, as lead counsel, I have to remain circumspect in any public statements on the filing in deference to the Court and the legal process.

Jonathan Turley
Lead Counsel

Here is the Complaint: House v. Burwell (D.D.C.) – Complaint (FILED)

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419 thoughts on “HOUSE FILES CHALLENGE OVER THE CHANGES TO THE AFFORDABLE CARE ACT”

  1. @2014

    Yes, I can see a Republican President refusing to prosecute employers who failed to pay minimum wages, for example. But I also see Republican congressman rising up to rein in him.

    Squeeky Fromm
    Girl Reporter

  2. SWM, the House has dirty hands as so many have said here and in the other thread. It’s sad that they don’t seem to have a sincere concern about the separation of powers as Professor Turley does, it is merely lip service. They didn’t care in the least when Bush did it. They don’t care that Obama is using his unilateral authority for the war in the ME. They don’t want to have to authorize the war, but they want him to do it. How is that not hypocritical?

  3. @Squeeky,
    wow , completely agree with her.

    “Intoxicated by messianic goals, the promise of instant gratification, and adrenaline-pumping exhortations, mobs create mayhem, chaos, and destruction, leaving a smoldering heap of wreckage for their leaders to climb to power.”

    Megyn keeps on asking how he can get away with this, but the fact is that he even got away with something like Benghazi in which American lives were lost. This got to change and I hope this lawsuit is the start of that change. I mean if this kind of lawless behavior is not challenged now then can you imagine what would happen if someone like Rick Santorum is the President?

  4. Bruce Peloquin, there is a 3 ? maximum. But, there is no max on !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  5. It fascinates me that folks think this lawsuit is an either/or. There are REAL constitutional issues and OF COURSE there is politics. JT is in it for the constitutional issues. This is pretty basic stuff.

  6. @DBQ – The financial aspect was something that was dis-concerning because the President changed it last year and it the ACA is supposed to stand on it’s own, then so will the free money. As I agree it will be impossible for those to be paid back. However, it is a dilemma.

    @Karen S – I just had back surgery 3 months ago and next week, I’m having neck surgery. If I were on Obamacare aka ACA, it wouldn’t happen for several reasons. I couldn’t afford to pay the deductible and this ACA Panel probably wouldn’t allow me to have the surgeries because I’m over the age of 40. American Airlines tried to dump our insurance in bankruptcy court and a federal judge would not allow them to do so. When I left AA, I went to work in law enforcement, which can be a physically demanding job. I worked booking in bad guys, like finger prints, mug shots and paperwork to the state, the feds or DHS.

    Most times, people brought in are drunk, tripping on drugs or just plain angry for being arrested and they take their anger out on us with physical attacks. So my trying to keep bad guys off the streets has earned me a bad back and a bad neck and I feel I deserve to be free from pain when I was a public servant. Because of my injuries, I’m unable to work now. I’m still young and have 2 full time college students to financially support. It’s been tough the past few years, as my salary seems to get smaller, but living on retirement from AA right now but their trying hard to dump our insurance and put us on ACA. For them to make us get on Obamacare, I would have to get a full-time job. This ACA is the worst thing that has happened to this country. Also my home lost 2/3’s of it’s value under Obama. Worst 6 years of my life.

  7. @2014

    Like I said above, for too many Democrats it is not about right and wrong. It is simply about the Democratic Party. Ann Coulter wrote a very good book called “Demonic” about the Democrat’s mob mentality. Here is an excerpt from a review:

    What make this her best book are her incisive demonstration that the revolution was the mother of the many totalitarian “revolutions” it spawned in the name of the people, her dissection of the mob mentality that drove it, and her case against today’s American liberals as exemplars of this mob mentality.

    She first establishes her base line, defining the mob as “an irrational, childlike, often violent organism that derives its energy from the group. Intoxicated by messianic goals, the promise of instant gratification, and adrenaline-pumping exhortations, mobs create mayhem, chaos, and destruction, leaving a smoldering heap of wreckage for their leaders to climb to power.”

    Sound familiar? It should, because “the Democratic Party is the party of the mob . . . Indeed, the very idea of a ‘community organizer’ is to stir up a mob for some political purpose.” No truer words.

    She then systematically identifies the Democratic Party’s mob characteristics and how its leaders’ appeal to them — through distortions, inflaming passions, demonizing opponents, and substituting propagandist images and sound bites in place of facts, ideas and persuasive argument.

    The Democratic Party is nothing if not a repository of hackneyed slogans (“the laws of logic have no action on crowds”), repeated mindlessly and incessantly and designed to thwart the rational consideration of ideas with appeals to incendiary, false rhetoric: “Bush lied, people died.” “No blood for oil.” “Tax cuts for the rich.”

    Next, Coulter takes us on a gripping tour of the murderously barbaric and ghoulishly bloody years of the French Revolution and its philosophical underpinnings, which were inspired in part by Jean Jacques Rousseau.

    She writes that “all the bloody totalitarian dictatorships of the twentieth century have drawn inspiration from Rousseau and the French Revolution.” All the “great liberal ‘reformers’ of the twentieth century, from Lenin to Hugo Chavez,” got their “playbook from Robespierre” — probably the worst and most radical of the French revolutionaries — “who argued, following Rousseau, that a ‘Republic of Virtue’ could only be achieved by ‘virtue combined with terror.'”

    Democrats, says Coulter, “are heirs to the French Revolution, the uprising of a mob,” whereas “conservatives are heirs to the American Revolution and the harmonious order of a republic.” Indeed.

    She details the leftists’ attraction to tyrants in the past 75 years, from Soviet leaders to Pol Pot, Fidel Castro, and Hugo Chavez, and its reflexive opposition to democratic leaders and movements, from Chiang Kai-shek to the Nicaraguan Contras.

    But it’s not just the liberals’ choice in regimes that parallels the French revolutionary tradition. It is their strategy to advance their policy agenda through exploitation of mob psychology, a phenomenon we are witnessing with alarming frequency today, especially under the Obama administration.

    It’s no accident that the Democrats’ campaign for Obamacare was bathed in unconscionable lies, beginning with the grossly inflated numbers of uninsured, and then forced into law over the people’s strenuous, well-known objections — a perfect illustration of the totalitarian outworking of the “general will.”

    Whether or not you agree with Coulter’s trenchant analysis, she has done her homework and applied tight logic, two things you can be sure her leftist critics will eschew in favor of the mob-style tactics of name-calling, innuendo, distortions, and demonization.

    http://www.newsmax.com/Limbaugh/AnnCoulter-Demonic-FrenchRevolution-taxcuts/2011/06/10/id/399557/

    Squeeky Fromm
    Girl Reporter

  8. Question Jonathanturley—-Do you really think that the republicans in congress gives a damn about the constitution??????????????

  9. I believe the Obamacare has adversely affected the residency training as well. I am sure any faculty member/residency training director can tell you more about this aspect.

  10. Karen S, I think the motives of the house republicans are suspect so I do not support their lawsuit. You will probably have better luck with the Supreme Court than the DC Circuit with regards to Obamacare. But since you live in California and the state has their own exchange you just might be stuck with it.

  11. @JetTexas

    Yes, I think Jon Gruber will have an impact on the ACA decision about the federal exchanges. Depending on which way SCOTUS flops, Gruber may only get “honorable mention” in a dissent, but I don’t see how they can completely ignore an ACA architect’s statement about the intent to use the subsidies as a carrot to the states..

    Squeeky Fromm
    Girl Reporter

  12. Now cancer patients can no longer go to the cancer treatment center that specialize in their cancer. They are severely limited in where they can go. Off-formulary drugs now have zero coverage.

    So people can lose their chances at remission and die because of this hideous law. People can get knocked right out of the middle class and into poverty with the absurd premiums and deductibles, thanks to this law.

    Anyone who thinks this is a humane solution to the problem of health care for the poor is fooling themselves.

  13. Squeeky, what do you think about Lawerance Tribe . One has to be quite shameless to be among the 10 who support this executive action, when he was even in the campaign ads of this president. A half way decent person would have not come forward in the support of this EO , after having been in the ads for the president.

  14. And millions had NO healthcare and struggled to find free clinics. People with preexisting conditions were simply OUT OF LUCK.

  17. @Squeeky Fromm, Girl Reporter ~ Thank you for your response. I wondered if the relief asked for would have much of an affect on this law. Although Judge Roberts called it out right, as a tax, something kept from the American people. I know Jonathan Gruber was mentioned in a brief to the Justices, do you feel that will have any influence on the outcome of their decision?

  18. No conservative here seems to care that there could be millions without healthcare once again. The basic gut level drive is to get rid of the ACA without having anything to replace it with. To go back to the status quo will only send healthcare prices soaring once again to accommodate the millions who will go back to using the ER as their primary souce of healthcare. There was no concern for the uninsured at any point in this whole long battle to destroy the ACA. The ACA should’ve been a stepping stone to Universal Healthcare, but that might just be too ‘socialistic’ for the right to ever embrace, what a sad statement for a civilized country like ours.

  19. Jettetexas:

    I’m in the same boat. I pay almost $1,000/month for insurance for 3 people, and we each have deductibles of $6,000. PLUS I need to pay out of pocket to see a doctor, because I can’t find any good ones who accept Obamacare.

    Doctors have to take a factory line approach, spending minutes with each patient, just to keep the doors open with what Obamacare pays in CA.

    What a mess.

  20. SWM:

    Why aren’t more Democrats getting behind this lawsuit? Are they unaware that other parties will eventually hold office? As Prof Turley said, they will rue the day they allowed an uber Presidency.

    I do not want any President of any party to have the power of a dictator or a king. The separation of powers keeps all 3 branches of government separate, and with equal power. Give all that power to one branch, and the result is devastating to democracy.

    I hope that more Democrats, Libertarians, and all other people start contacting their representatives, urging them to get behind this lawsuit. If all parties unified against his power grab, I think Obama would finally be checked.

    Because I do not wish that the next Republican President will be able to rule like a king. I want this stopped, now.

    Why don’t you???

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