Attorney General Jeff Sessions defended in a letter to House Speaker Paul Ryan on Thursday the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) reason for not defending the Affordable Care Act, also known as ObamaCare.
“As you know, the Executive Branch has a longstanding tradition of defending the constitutionality of duly enacted statutes if reasonable arguments can be made in their defense,” Sessions wrote. “But not every professionally responsible argument is necessarily reasonable in this context,” he continued, adding that this is “a rare case where the proper course is to forgo defense of the law.”
Politico reported that on Thursday the DOJ argued in court that the key components of the Obama health care law are unconstitutional, siding in large part with a challenge to the law from 20 GOP-led states. The DOJ said that the Supreme Court’s ruling in 2012 that upheld ObamaCare’s individual mandate that requires people to have insurance or face a tax penalty as constitutional under Congress’s taxing power is wrong.
Congress revoked the mandate penalty as part of last year’s tax bill, after which the GOP-led states and DOJ started arguing that the mandate itself is no longer a tax and is now invalid. They also argue that key pre-existing condition protections cannot be separated from the mandate and should be invalidated, while the remainder of the law can stay.
Sessions being sided with the states is uncommon for the DOJ, which typically defends federal laws when they are challenged in court. This only confirms that President Donald Trump’s administration is not going to defend the healthcare law which they regularly criticize.
However, this is not the first time an administration has disagreed with a federal law. Back in 2011, Former President Obama’s Justice Department refused to defend the Defense of Marriage Act, which defined marriage as being strictly between a man and a woman.
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