Obamacare Loses Again

Yesterday, Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt won a victory for the rule of law when he successfully challenged illegal subsidies used to compel states to accept Obamacare. In a decision in favor of the State of Oklahoma's motion for summary judgment, US District Judge Ronald White ruled that the IRS provision enacted outside of congressional authority was "arbitrary, capricious, and abuse of discretion or otherwise not in accordance with the law."  In 2012, General Pruitt was the first to file a lawsuit challenging the use of taxpayer-funded subsidies to enforce Obamacare in states that had chosen to not establish a healthcare exchange under the law. General Pruitt said of the victory:

The administration and its bureaucrats in the IRS handed out billions in illegal tax credits and subsidies and vastly expanded the reach of the health care law because they didn’t like the way Congress wrote the Affordable Care Act. That’s not how our system of government works   The Obama administration created this problem and rather than having an agency like the IRS rewrite a law it didn’t like, the administration should have done the right thing and worked with Congress to amend the law. Oklahoma was the first to challenge the administration's actions and today's ruling vindicates what we recognized early on and that is the administration can't rewrite the Affordable Care Act by executive fiat.

The decision is the third on this issue with the other two by appellate courts splitting.  (The DC Circuit Court came down on the side of General Pruitt.)  General Pruitt is RNLA’s October member conference call guest.