AG Hawley and 20-State Coalition File Injunction Against Obamacare

JEFFERSON CITY, Missouri, April 27 -- Missouri Attorney General Josh D. Hawley issued the following news:

Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley, as part of a 20-state coalition, filed a motion seeking a preliminary injunction against the federal government's Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare. In February, the same 20-state coalition filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Obamacare, explaining that Congress rendered all of Obamacare unconstitutional by doing away with the tax penalty in Obamacare's individual mandate when it enacted President Trump's tax overhaul.

In the motion for a preliminary injunction, the Attorneys General told the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas that an injunction against Obamacare is necessary to spare the people of Missouri and the other states from the enormous financial burden caused by the individual mandate. Before Obamacare, "the states allowed individuals to determine whether to buy health insurance, established high-risk insurance pools to help individuals in ill-health, enabled cost-sharing, and instituted many other policies that Obamacare now preempts or functionally preempts," the coalition wrote.

When the Supreme Court upheld Obamacare in 2012, a majority of the justices agreed that the provision forcing individuals to purchase health insurance was unconstitutional without the tax penalty. The commerce power, Chief Justice Roberts explained, gives Congress the power to regulate commerce, and not to compel commerce, as Obamacare does. Furthermore, Congress and the Obama administration made it clear that the individual mandate was an essential component of the law, without which the remainder of the law would not have been enacted.

"My Office will continue to fight to take health care choices out of the hands of bureaucrats and return them to the hands of Missourians and their physicians," Hawley said. "This unlawful Obamacare must be enjoined as soon as possible so that free choice is again made possible for states and individuals."

Texas and Wisconsin lead the lawsuit against Obamacare and are joined by Missouri and the attorneys general from Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Carolina, South, Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, and West Virginia, along with the governors of Maine and Mississippi.