House Republicans just filed their lawsuit against Obama “over unilateral actions on the health care law that they say are abuses of the president’s executive authority.” Michael Lynch and Rachel Surminsky list reasons the lawsuit is likely to fail. Among them:
The courts have made it evident through precedent that they do not want to settle inter-branch disputes that can be remedied through legislative action. Congress has to establish that it cannot stop or remedy executive actions through legislation. Additionally, Congress must show it has made a previous attempt to address the executive action (see Goldwater v. Carter and Kucinich v. Obama). Evidence must be presented that any failures are not simply a result of an inability to overcome political opposition to potentially effective remedies.
Although Congress has made no attempt to legislatively reverse Obama’s deadline changes, Boehner will likely argue that any such attempts would be unable to effectively constrain executive implementation of the ACA. It is unlikely that courts will be swayed by such an argument.
Republicans are talking about suing Obama over his immigration executive order. That suit would also be an extreme long shot:
[I]t would be “very difficult” for the House—or another challenger—to successfully press a case against Obama’s immigration actions on deportation enforcement, said John Malcolm, director of The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Legal and Judicial Studies. The main problem is the legal question of standing, or who has been injured by Obama’ s policy change and can bring a lawsuit. That issue has already stopped a legal challenge brought by border agents to Obama’s similar 2012 immigration action, and it looms over any other suit lodged by a member of Congress.
The Dish 