The Texas Attorney General is wrong on the law of his challenge of the senate version of the health care bill. He is wasting taxpayer resources on a loser challenge.

Attorney General Abbott challenges the constitutionality of a law that does not exist, promising to use the office of the Texas Attorney General to “explore all legal options” to dismantle federal legislation. Ironically, Texas would receive subsidies and benefits of greater magnitude than most of the nation, in the $7.5 to 10 billion range.

Even if the bill emerged as a law, the Texas Attorney General has no power to intervene. He has no standing, legally, to challenge the law or political horse-trading in the U.S. Senate. It is bad lawyering, grandstanding with no legal basis. The 5th and 14th Amendments protect persons from the government. A state and its agencies are not “persons” entitled to the right of constitutional due process. See, e.g., State v. Katzenbach, 383 U.S. 301, 323-24 (1966).  And under Texas cases, the Attorney General lacks standing to make such constitutional challenges.  Moreover, the Texas Attorney General learned in his losing battle against accommodating the disabled in Texas State buildings that Congress has the power to condition federal funds on compliance with the law. 

If the Texas Attorney General had standing, he should have fought against unfair distribution of our federal highway tax dollars. Texas has been and remains a net donor to the other states.  (Example: The 2005 $286.4 billion transportation bill, containing the bridge to nowhere, guaranteed Alaskans received about $1500 per capita in highway benefits, while Texans received a meager $36 per capita. Texas was a net donor to the rest of the country that year of 8.7 cents of every dollar.)

If the Texas Attorney General wanted to challenge wrongdoing against the people of Texas, he should have challenged the failure of state officials to meet their obligations to Texas citizens under the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). The State of Texas has sent hundreds of millions of federal tax money paid by Texans to other states because Texas officials wrongly created barriers to full enrollment in CHIP (6 month reenrollment requirements for example). The Texas Attorney General has turned his back on the people of Texas suffering from the highest percentage of health uninsured in the country, with sky-high rates.

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During her 30 year legal career, Barbara Ann Radnofsky, Democratic candidate for Texas Attorney General, has represented retirees, life-saving doctors, blood banks, children burned by lighters, families of murder victims, unfairly treated businesses: a wide variety of persons entitled to protection. Barbara Ann graduated with honors from the University of Houston and the University of Texas School of Law.   She was honored as the Outstanding Young Lawyer of Texas in 1988 and for the past 17 years she has been listed in, "Best Lawyers in America".

Prior to 2006, she was a partner at the law firm of Vinson & Elkins in Houston, where she served as head of the Alternate Dispute Resolution Section.  She was the first woman at Vinson & Elkins to have children as an associate and later attain partnership.  Texas has never had a woman Attorney General.

Contact Katie Floyd for citations to legal decisions and economic analysis
713-858-9391 (cell); katie.floyd@radnofsky.com