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Oklahoma Establishes Standing to Challenge the Affordable Care Act: District Court Says IRS Rule May Injure Oklahoma as an Employer – Oklahoma ex. rel. Pruitt v. Sebelius

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 January 2021

Abstract

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Type
Recent Case Developments
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics and Boston University 2013

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References

1 Oklahoma ex. rel. Pruitt v. Sebelius, No. CIV-11-30-RAW, 2013 WL 4052610 (E.D. Okla. Aug. 12, 2013).

2 See I.R.C. § 4980H(a)-(b) (2006 & Supp. V 2011).

3 Pruitt, 2013 WL 4052610, at *2, *12.

4 See 42 U.S.C. §18082(a)(1) (2006 & Supp. V 2011); I.R.C. § 36B(c)(1)(A) (2006 & Supp. IV 2010).

5 See I.R.C. § 36B.

6 See 42 U.S.C. §§ 18031(b), 18041(c).

7 Status of State Health Insurance Exchange Implementation, CTR. ON BUDGET & POLICY PRIORITIES (Aug. 6, 2013), http://www.cbpp.org/files/CBPP-Analysis-on-the-Status-of-State-Exchange-Implementation.pdf. Of these twenty-seven states, twenty-three have been involved in legal action against the ACA. See, e.g., National Fed’n of Indep. Bus. (NFIB) v. Sebelius, 132 S.Ct. 2566 (2012); Kinder v. Geitner, 695 F.3d 772 (8th Cir. 2012); Virginia ex rel.Cuccinelli v. Sebelius, 656 F.3d 253 (4th Cir. 2011).

8 Pruitt, 2013 WL 4052610, at *1.

9 I.R.C. § 36B(c)(2)(A)(i) (emphasis added).

10 Pruitt, 2013 WL 4052610, at *1.

11 26 C.F.R. § 1.36B-2(a)(1) (2013).

12 Id. § 1.36B-1(k) (emphasis added); 45 C.F.R. § 155.20 (2012); see Pruitt, 2013 WL 4052610, at *2.

13 See Pruitt, 2013 WL 4052610, at *1.

14 SeeI.R.C. § 4980H(a)-(b).

15 Id.

16 Pruitt, 2013 WL 4052610, at *2.

17 Id. at *1.

18 Id. at *7. The court found that this claim was based on a parens patriae theory of standing, which the Supreme Court rejected in Massachusetts v. Mellon, 262 U.S. 447, 485 (1923). The court made this determination notwithstanding statements in Massachusett s v. EPA, 549 U.S. 497 (2007), that indicated states are “entitled to special solicitude in … standing analysis” based on its “stake in protecting its quasi-sovereign interests.”

19 Pruitt, 2013 WL 4052610, at *6.

20 Id. at *7.

21 Id.

22 Id. at *8.

23 I.R.C. § 4980H(c)(2) (2006 & Supp. V 2011) (” ‘[A]pplicable large employer’ means … an employer who employed an average of at least 50 full-time employees on business days during the preceding calendar year.”).

24 Pruitt, 2013 WL 4052610, at *8.

25 Id.

26 Liberty University v. Lew, No. 10-2347, 2013 WL 3470532 (4th Cir. July 11, 2013).

27 Pruitt, 2013 WL 4052610, at *8.

28 Gruber, Jonathan, The Impacts of the Affordable Care Act: How Reasonable Are the Projections? 4-5 (Nat’l Bureau of Econ. Research, Working Paper No. 17168, 2011)Google Scholar, available at http://www.nber.org/papers/w17168.

29 Id.

30 See 42 U.S.C. § 18901(I) (2006 & Supp. IV 2010) (“[b]y significantly increasing health insurance coverage, [the ACA] will minimize this adverse selection and broaden the health insurance risk pool to include healthy individuals, which will lower health insurance premiums.”).

31 NFIB v. Sebelius, 132 S.Ct. 2566, 2671 (2012) (Scalia, J., dissenting). See also 42 U.S.C. § 18091(J) (“[t]he [individual mandate] is essential to creating effective health insurance markets that do not require underwriting and eliminate its associated administrative costs”).

32 See 42 U.S.C. § 18091.

33 Id. § 18071; I.R.C. § 36B (2006 & Supp. IV 2010).

34 Oklahoma ex. rel. Pruitt v. Sebelius, No. CIV-11-30-RAW, 2013 WL 4052610, at *11 (E.D. Okla. Aug. 12, 2013).

35 Id.

36 Id.