Almost immediately after the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act became law, the attorney general of Florida, joined by AGs from 12 other states, filed a lawsuit asking the courts to declare the act unconstitutional.
In essence, the AGs claimed that the law was an unconstitutional extension of federal power that violated the Commerce Clause, the Tenth Amendment, and Article I, Sections 2 and 9 of the Constitution.
Probably the most effective argument said that penalizing someone for inactivity (not having health insurance) could not be used to support a congressional invasion of the states. This might have been the end of it, had it not been for the fact some experts began to suspect the AGs had no legal justification for bringing the lawsuit in the first place. In fact, some experts even argued that the AGs should be made to pay for the cost of the lawsuit out of their own pockets and perhaps even be disbarred because they had violated Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Rule 11 demands that an attorney certify that, in any lawsuit filed in federal court, the “claims, defenses, and other legal contentions are warranted by existing law.” The claims brought in this case were not only unwarranted but also patently false, or so the argument goes. For one thing the AGs had grossly misstated the law and had no evidence to support their factual contentions. The new law would not eliminate Medicare in noncomplying states, as the AGs contend;
it would not require states to create an agency to help insurance consumers as the AGs said, and it would not impose a financial burden on the states, as the AGs argued, but would, instead, result in a huge savings for some states due to new federal money flowing into those states. Moreover, and perhaps more to the point, the very filing of the lawsuit in the first place was an illegal exercise of state power since, as long ago as 1923, the Supreme Court ruled in Massach u setts v. Mellon, 262 U.S. 447, that the states have no standing to attack federal statutes on constitutional grounds. The consequences of this lawsuit go beyond the declaratory action requested by the AGs. It will cost a fortune in the taxpayers’ money to argue the case, it can delay the law’s implementation, and it could eliminate many needed programs that would disappear along with any truly unconstitutional parts (if there really are any). [See State of Florida, et al. v. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 3:10-CV-91 RV/EMT; and Timothy Stoltzfus Jost, “Sanction the 18 State AGs,” The National Law Journal (April 12, 2010).]

Question 

1. Should the state AGs in this case be held liable for the cost of the la w suit based on their alleged violation of Rule 11? Should they face di s barment?
Is the suit unethical? Explain.
2. Should the states be given standing to attack federal statutes on constit u tional grounds? Explain.
3. Should it be possible for a party to attack one part of a law as unconstitutional without attacking all parts of that same law? E x plain.
4. Should a judge be sanctioned for allowing a lawsuit that vi o lates Rule 11 and a Supreme Court precedent? Why or why not?
5. Who will ultimately end up paying for this lawsuit and is that a fair and just outcome no matter what the status of the law itself? Explain.