{"id":54092,"date":"2016-09-30T11:27:00","date_gmt":"2016-09-30T16:27:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/content.findlaw-admin.com\/ability-legal\/supreme\/legal-commentary\/the-threshold-hurdles-in-the-lawsuit-alleging-that-the-president-signed-a-budget-bill-the-house-never-passed.html"},"modified":"2016-09-30T11:27:00","modified_gmt":"2016-09-30T16:27:00","slug":"the-threshold-hurdles-in-the-lawsuit-alleging-that-the-president-signed-a-budget-bill-the-house-never-passed","status":"publish","type":"supreme","link":"https:\/\/supreme.findlaw.com\/legal-commentary\/the-threshold-hurdles-in-the-lawsuit-alleging-that-the-president-signed-a-budget-bill-the-house-never-passed.html","title":{"rendered":"The Threshold Hurdles in the Lawsuit Alleging that the President Signed a Budget Bill the House Never Passed"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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The Threshold Hurdles in the Lawsuit Alleging that the President Signed a Budget Bill the House Never Passed:
Part One in a Series<\/span><\/h1><\/td>\n <\/tr>\n

By VIKRAM DAVID AMAR<\/h2><\/a><\/td>\n <\/tr>\n

Friday, Mar. 31, 2006<\/td>\n\n <\/tr>\n <\/table>\n

When is a bill sent to the President by Congress and signed by him not a “Law of the United States” within the meaning of the Constitution? For one thing, when the measure did not actually pass both the Senate and<\/u> the House. That is the seemingly compelling — if a bit eighth-grade civics — argument being pressed in a federal lawsuit challenging the validity of the so-called “Deficit Reduction Act of 2005” approved by President Bush on February 8, 2006. In this series, I will examine the threshold hurdles this lawsuit faces.<\/p>

What Led to the Suit – A Disregard for Constitutional Niceties<\/b><\/p> \n\n\n

According to newspaper reports (and also a prior column by John Dean<\/a>), the Senate version of the legislation — which passed the upper house only by virtue of Vice President Dick Cheney’s tie-breaking vote — provided Medicare reimbursements for home medical equipment rentals for only up to 13 months. Although Republican leaders expected a majority of the House to accede to this conservative cap, the legislative version actually voted on by the House (and approved there by a razor thin 216-214 margin) provided such reimbursements for up to 36 months – a figure apparently included in the bill as a result of a legislative clerk’s mistake. The House version would require about $2 billion more in federal outlays than the Senate version.<\/p>

Rather than fix the mistake and have the House revote — this time on a bill substantively identical to the Senate’s — which has been the protocol in past such situations, House and Senate leaders apparently decided simply to physically alter the already-voted upon House version to bring it in line with the Senate’s rendition. The Speaker of the House and the President Pro Tempore of the Senate then certified to President Bush that this version, containing the 13-month provision, had passed both houses. President Bush, after having been made aware of the debacle, nonetheless signed the measure.<\/p>

That prompted Jim Zeigler, a lawyer from Mobile, Alabama who practices elder law, to file suit in federal district court seeking a declaration that the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 is not a valid law.<\/p>

The First Threshold Hurdle – Standing<\/b><\/p>

If a court entertains the merits of Zeigler’s suit, and if he is demonstrably factually correct (as numerous press accounts seem to conclude) that the version actually voted on by the House was different from the one signed by the President, then he should undoubtedly win. The requirement under Article I, section 7<\/a> of the Constitution that both the House and the Senate pass a bill – the same bill, with the same substance — before it can become law is, as Zeigler has put it, basic “con law 101.” Put simply, bicameralism is a prerequisite to federal lawmaking.<\/p>

The trickier question is whether a federal court will ever look at the merits of Zeigler’s claim, or instead decide that the matter is not amenable to judicial resolution. The phrase federal courts use when they want to stay out of a mess like this is that the dispute is not “justiciable.”<\/p>

One question the lawsuit surely raises right now is whether Zeigler has constitutional “standing” to pursue his claim. Standing requires, among other things, that a plaintiff in federal court allege a personalized “injury in fact” rather than a “generalized grievance.” In other words, Zeigler has to show that the federal enactment actually harms him, or will harm him, personally. <\/p> Column continues below \u2193<\/a>\n\n