Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti joined a federal lawsuit on Thursday challenging the Biden administration’s plan of extending Affordable Care Act (ACA), or Obamacare, benefits to more than 200,000 illegal immigrants.
The lawsuit, led by Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach, was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of North Dakota Western Division.
The Biden Admin's attempt to unlawfully steer broad ACA benefits to illegal immigrants is part of a larger pattern of an administration that fails to take our constitutional institutions seriously.
TN is proud to join 14 other states in this lawsuit.
➡️https://t.co/gIdVMrIO7g pic.twitter.com/Z4nK5PpThj
— TN Attorney General (@AGTennessee) August 8, 2024
In addition to Skrmetti, state attorneys general from Alabama, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, South Carolina, South Dakota, and Virginia joined the lawsuit.
The lawsuit challenges a final rule by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) called the “Clarifying the Eligibility of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) Recipients and Certain Other NonCitizens for a Qualified Health Plan Through an Exchange, Advance Payments of the Premium Tax Credit, Cost-Sharing Reductions, a Basic Health Program.”
The agency’s final rule amends CMS’ definition of “lawfully present” for public healthcare benefits to now include unlawfully present aliens who have been granted deferred action under DACA and employment authorization.
Set to take effect on November 1, the agency’s final rule would make more than 200,000 DACA recipients eligible for taxpayer-subsidized health plans, including 6,360 DACA recipients in Tennessee.
It is estimated that there are approximately 162,000 to 218,000 illegal aliens residing in Tennessee, costing taxpayers between approximately $721 million and $971 million per year.
“The rule of law means if you don’t like what a law says, you work to achieve a legislative change – you don’t get to pretend the law says what you want,” Skrmetti said in a statement.
“This attempt to unlawfully steer broad health care benefits to illegal immigrants is part of a larger pattern of an administration that fails to take our constitutional institutions seriously. Instead of engaging in the hard work of passing legislation, we see endless attempts to illegally rewrite laws through regulation alongside an effort to delegitimize the courts that can check this executive overreach,” Skrmetti added.
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
Perhaps the so-called “constitutional expert” in this discussion might want to re-visit the power of the court systems.
As an inconvenient truth the obama/biden/harris clan (the clintons are always active) and it’s handler’s in their imaginary but effective authoritarian ways of the disinformation highway (recall the one that al built) ruled by the need for greed and traveled the road to govern by executive orders, memorandums and proclamations.
Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division is a ferocious wolf and will do anything to protect, aid and provide Carte Blanche to illegal immigrants from every nation as they are her bread and butter. The so-called underprivileged minorities have become the power party backed by the billionaire foundations.
The Constitution, Amendments Bill of Rights are all a matter of opinion. One of biden’s executive orders was to facilitate the illegals sexually confused
asap and get their trans surgeries that lined up at the border hospitals.
Btw, Tennessee became the first state in the U.S. to scrap residency requirements for certain international medical graduates (IMGs), opening up an alternative pathway to permanent licensure.
Relaxed healthcare licensing in TN serves a purpose to get more federal and endless money from the mega foundations for grants and Vandy reaps the cash flow for experimental voodoo.
Gee I wonder if our AG understands that everytime he stands up against unconstitutional federal action he is participating in nullification which is a right of all states and the people of all states yet is a right our AG says we are not entitled to practice but then actually setting in motion nullification every time he challenges federal actions? Of course he is wrong but he speaks out of both sides of his mouth. He says nullification violates the Supremacy Clause which if he actually understood the Supremacy clause (which anyone with a 3rd grade reading comprehension could understand) he would know the Supremacy clause is on the side of nullification. If he would research the history and writings of our founders instead of using cases (which do not trump the Constitution) he would understand we do not need to sue the federal government when they step outside their constitutional lane. We simply exercise our right and our power as the creator of the federal government and simply refuse to comply. The states and the people of the states created the federal government (the created does not rule supreme over the creator)and delegated very defined and very limited legislative powers (Art. 1 Sec. 8) to the federal government while states retained indefinite rights and powers (9th and 10th Amendments). Art. 1 sec. 10 says what states cannot do…..there is nothing in Art. 1 Sec. 10 that says the states cannot nullify unconstitutional acts of the federal government. In fact our founders felt it was not only our duty but our responsibility to keep the federal government in its constitutional lane. It is the failure of the states and the people to do that that has put us in the mess we are in today.
All may wish to read the ACA Act. Those that wish to illegally include those that are in the States illegally are knowingly breaking Federal Law. That in turn makes all Federal Felons. Including the Unregistered Foreign Agents known as NGO’s.