There are now two more cases, drawn along party lines, of state governors locking horns with their attorney generals over lawsuits challenging President Obama’s health care reform.
Arizona, like 15 other states, said Tuesday that it is filing suit challenging the constitutionality of the nation’s new health care law, despite the objections of the state’s Attorney General. In Tennessee, the state Attorney General has also balked at filing such a challenge.
Rather conveniently, Arizona’s Republican Gov. Jan Brewer signed a bill April 1 that allows her to get around Attorney General Terry Goddard, a Democrat, and file the anti-health care reform lawsuit.
In Arizona, Republicans claim that the new health care law violates the Constitution because it mandates that people buy private health insurance. Goddard argues that the suit is frivolous and a waste of taxpayers’ money.
So now Brewer’s general counsel, Joseph Kanefield, will handle the suit for the governor and the state.
Meanwhile, in Tennessee Attorney General Robert Cooper claims that his state Legislature’s bid to try to throw out the federal health care legislation is most likely unconstitutional, so he can’t enforce its efforts. http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2010/apr/06/tennessee-ag-says-state-attempts-nullify-federal-h/?partner=popular
Cooper on Tuesday offered his legal opinion that if the Legislature wants to take on Obama’s new health care law, it will have to get its own lawyer to do it.
The attorney general contends that U.S. Constitution gives Congress the power to pre-empt state law.
