Pro-Obamacare legal expert admits president broke law

A University of Michigan law professor who has written  commentaries and opinion pieces in major publications from the Los Angeles Times to the New York Times in praise of Obamacare now admits the president broke the law in his implementation of a requirement that citizens buy government-ordained health insurance plans or be fined.

 

Nicholas Bagley’s new stance grabbed the attention of Case Western Reserve University professor Jonathan Adler.

 

Writing at the Volokh Conspiracy legal blog, he pointed out that there’s nothing new about claims that “the Obama administration has repeatedly flouted legal requirements or acted outside the scope of its delegated authority when implementing Obamacare.”

 

But it’s significant when an ardent Obamacare advocate admits it.

 

“It is more notable when a prominent defender of the Obama administration acknowledges that the administration has colored outside the lines, and not always with good justification,” Adler wrote. “So those interested in the Affordable Care Act and the administrative law should give Nicholas Bagley’s new paper on ‘Legal Limits and the Implementation of the Affordable Care Act’ a careful read. The paper’s still in draft form – and in my view bends over backward to provide the most charitable read of the administration’s actions – but still concludes that the administration has violated the law repeatedly in implementing the ACA, even if not quite as often as some administration critics have claimed.”

 

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