Democratic Files Brief Supporting Health Care Law Challenge

While ignored by broadcast news, print media sources have taken note that a Democratic attorney general has taking a stance against President Obama’s health care law.

The New York Times reports, “Missouri’s Democratic attorney general broke with his party and urged a federal judge to invalidate the central provision of the new health care law.” The Times adds, “The filing of the brief by Attorney General Chris Koster, underscores the act’s political tenuousness in a critical Midwestern swing state.” This move, “followed months of pressure from state Republicans that he join attorneys general from other states who are challenging the constitutionality of the law.”

Missouri voters in August became the first in the nation to pass a measure barring the government from requiring people to have health insurance and from penalizing those who don’t.

The Associated Press reported that Missouri’s Republican-led House and Senate each passed resolutions urging Koster to defend the new state law. Koster stated in a letter to legislative leaders that he personally supports an expansion of health coverage, but, based on his legal analysis, believes the federal law is in conflict with Missouri’s new voter-approved law and goes beyond what courts previously have found to be Congress’s authority to regulate interstate commerce under the U.S. Constitution. ◆