Politics

Conservative group looks to sue Obama administration over employer mandate delay

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A conservative watchdog group is looking for plaintiffs to sue the Obama administration for delaying Obamacare’s “employer mandate” for a year.

In an email to supporters, Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton explained that the organization is considering litigation “challenging President Obama’s rewriting of Obamacare.”

“We obviously object to the employer mandate, the individual mandate, and the entire Obamacare law, but we understand that, under the U.S. Constitution, the law can only be changed by legislation passed by Congress and signed by the president,” Fitton wrote Monday. “President Obama evidently wants to delay at least some of the ill effects of his health care scheme until after the 2014 congressional elections. But politics do not trump the Constitution or the rule of law.”

In July, the Obama administration announced that it would be delaying by a year the requirement that companies with 50 or more workers offer affordable health insurance or face up to a $3,000 fine per employee.

“We think there is a category of Americans that would have a claim to enforce the rule of law in Obamacare,” Fitton told The Daily Caller.

In his email, Fitton noted that while the employer mandate has been delayed, the individual mandate has not.

“Many Americans are caught in the middle,” he wrote. “They are obligated to have Obama-approved health insurance, but their employers are not obligated to provide it, at least for another year. As a result, these Americans will be forced to purchase Obama-approved health insurance on an Obamacare-created health insurance exchange or pay the tax penalty. Either way, they’re out-of-pocket.”

“If you are going to have to purchase Obama-approved health insurance through an Obamacare-created health insurance exchange or pay a tax penalty because your employer, which would have been covered by the employer mandate, is dropping or does not provide health insurance, you may have a claim to challenge President Obama’s unilateral rewriting of the law,” he added.

Judicial Watch is calling on people who think they are interested in becoming a plaintiff in the suit to be in touch.

Fitton said that the initial email has generated a strong early response.

“Hopefully this gets other lawsuits going, other people thinking about other claims they can bring to challenge how Obamacare is implemented or not implemented,” he added.

According to Fitton, it would only take one plaintiff with necessary standing for Judicial Watch to mount a lawsuit.

The Obama administration has held that the delay is “not unusual.”

“People who suggest that there’s anything unusual about the delaying of a deadline in the implementation of a complex and comprehensive law are deliberately sticking their heads in the sand, or are just willfully ignorant about past precedent,” White House spokesman Jay Carney said in July.

Nevertheless, Republicans have contended that it is unfair to delay the employer mandate but not the individual mandate — with the Republican-controlled House voting to delay both the employer and individual mandates in mid July.

In recent weeks and months, additional provisions of the president’s signature health-care law have been revealed as being delayed, including the cap on out-of-pocket expenses.

“We’re in a crisis situation in terms of the constitutional order and we hate Obamacare as much as the next guy, but the idea that the president can rescind portions of it that are politically inconvenient just goes against everything we stand for as a Republic,” Fitton said.

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