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NJ pro se plaintiffs: HCR waivers are unconstitutional
...Professor Philip Hamburger of the Columbia University School of Law wrote in National Review Online two days ago that the waivers are an unconstitutional extension of executive power. The Department of Health and Human Services has at last count granted 733 such waivers to various large corporations, labor unions, and not-for-profit organizations, exempting them from the rises in the annual limits of coverage that HR 3590, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, mandates beginning September 23, 2010. In addition, HHS has waived these limit rises for all insurers in four States (Kentucky, New Jersey, Ohio, and Tennessee) that have laws on the books, passed before September 23, that set lower annual limits in order to keep healthcare insurance affordable.

Hamburger argues that the waivers are akin to royal dispensations, which kings of England began to grant to some of their subjects in imitation of the papal dispensations of the Middle Ages. After the "Glorious" Revolution of 1688 (William and Mary), Parliament revoked the power to dispense or suspend any law except where Parliament itself authorized the king so to act. In the American Revolution, States similarly restricted the power to suspend a law (which suspension would apply to everyone) and forbade the dispensing authority, which would amount to a special favor. And the United States Constitution nowhere allows the Congress even to delegate to the President the authority to suspend any law, and never once recognizes any authority, by any branch of government, to dispense with a law a priori as it would apply to the acts of any one person or group. The President may grant a reprieve or pardon, but may do that only after the fact, not before the fact....