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20 states sue federal government, trying to pull the plug on Obamacare
[LI] The last time we looked at the status of former President Barack Obama’s signature legislation, congressional Republicans had pulled the plug on Obamacare’s Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB), which Republicans have tagged as the "Death Panel".

Now, A coalition of 20 U.S. states has sued the federal government over Obamacare, claiming the law is no longer constitutional after the repeal of the mandate.
Led by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel, the lawsuit said that without the individual mandate, which was eliminated as part of the Republican tax law signed by President Donald Trump in December, Obamacare was unlawful.

"The U.S. Supreme Court already admitted that an individual mandate without a tax penalty is unconstitutional," Paxton said in a statement. "With no remaining legitimate basis for the law, it is time that Americans are finally free from the stranglehold of Obamacare, once and for all," he said.
In a nutshell, the lawsuit contends that without the mandate, the Court must toss the rest of the "Affordable Care Act", because the rest of the law cannot be "severed" from the mandate. The Justice Department did not immediately respond as to whether the Trump administration would defend the law in court.

Ilya Somin, Professor of Law at George Mason University, has a detailed analysis on the likely success of this lawsuit. Somin asserts that plaintiffs are right to argue that the mandate is unconstitutional, but are probably wrong asserting that the mandate’s demise requires the court to eliminate the rest of Obamacare along with it.
Posted by: Besoeker 2018-03-06
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=509596