Newly sworn in Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne announced today that he's planning to do something his predecessor, Terry Goddard, refused to do: throw the Arizona Attorney General's Office into the multi-state crusade against President Barack Obama's health care overhaul.
In May, Governor Jan Brewer attached Arizona to a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in the Northern District of Florida. Twenty other states did the same.
Goddard, at the time running for governor against Brewer, refused to join the lawsuit -- although, even as a Democrat, he wouldn't say whether he supported the bill.
From the AG's Office:
Last October the judge rejected the U.S. Department of Justices arguments and allowed two critical claims raised by the States to move forward: (1) the individual mandate is an unconstitutional exercise of Congress' authority under the Commerce Clause; and (2) the costly expansion of Medicaid and the States inability to effectively opt-out of the program amount to an unconstitutional coercion of the States at the hands of Congress. The court currently has under advisement summary judgment motions filed by all parties.
"The 10th amendment provides that all powers not expressly delegated to the federal government are reserved to the states or the people respectively," Horne says. "The constitution does not give the power to the federal government to force people to buy things they don't want to buy, such as health insurance. The requirement in the Obama bill that they do so is therefore unconstitutional."
Horne says he expects several other states to join the lawsuit today, as well.
