Get more! Sign up for PLANSPONSOR newsletters.
Benefits July 20, 2011
States Support MO Challenge to Health Care Law
July 20, 2011 (PLANSPONSOR.com) - Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott and officials from 20 other states filed a brief with the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that challenges the constitutionality of the federal health care law.
Reported by Rebecca Moore
According to a press release from Abbott’s office, the States’ amicus brief supports a legal challenge filed by Missouri Lieutenant Governor Peter Kinder in July 2010. A district court judge in Missouri dismissed the lawsuit, and the plaintiffs appealed their case to the 8th Circuit.
“By attempting to compel people to participate in commerce, the individual mandate far exceeds the federal government’s Commerce Clause authority to regulate commerce,” the brief says. “Sanctioning such a power would eliminate all meaningful limits on Congress’s authority and sound the death knell for our constitutional structure and individual liberties.”
The States that joined Texas in the amicus brief are Florida, Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Idaho, Louisiana, Maine, Michigan, Nebraska, Nevada, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah, Washington and Wisconsin. Their own legal challenge to the health care law was filed in Florida (see Court Green Lights FL HCR Challenge).