House Can Sue Administration on ACA Funding

September 21, 2015 Robert Sheen Affordable Care Act, Legislation, Regulations

The House of Representatives can pursue its lawsuit against the Obama Administration that claims funding of subsidies under the Affordable Care Act violate the Constitution.

Judge Rosemary M. Collyer of the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., noted that her decision only cleared the way for the House to pursue its lawsuit, and “the merits of this lawsuit await another day.” The Administration said it will appeal the ruling.

Led primarily by its Republican members, the House of Representatives filed the lawsuit in November of 2014 against Sylvia Burwell, the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) and Jacob Lew, Secretary of the Treasury.

The suit argues that by issuing the subsidies, the Secretaries “spent billions of unappropriated dollars” to support the ACA, in violation of the Constitution’s requirement that all federal spending must be appropriated by Congress.

The Administration argued that the House lacked standing to sue and stop the expenditure for which Congress had not appropriated funds. Attorneys for the House responded that it did have to stand because, as a result of the Secretaries’ actions, it had been “divested utterly and completely of its most defining constitutional function.”

On this issue, wrote the judge, “the Court agrees: the constitutional trespass alleged in this case would inflict a concrete, particular harm upon the House for which it has the standing to seek redress in this Court.”

The Constitution “vests Congress with exclusive power over the federal purse,” the judge wrote. “Yet this constitutional structure would collapse, and the role of the House would be meaningless if the Executive could circumvent the appropriations process and spend funds however it pleases.”

The court rejected a second claim in the House’s lawsuit, that the Administration’s decision to change enforcement of the Employer’s Mandate also subverted the role of the House. That’s an argument over the implementation of a statute, not a constitutional question, the judge ruled, and on that issue, the House does not have the standing to sue.

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