Yesterday I questioned who could possibly have standing to challenge the President’s decision to delay the employer mandate for some, but not all, businesses.

Seth Chandler blogs along similar lines, but in much more detail, about who would have standing.

Opponents will hunt for a plaintiff.  As others have noted, due to a doctrine called “standing,” this will not be so easy. Under Supreme Court precedent, the plaintiff is going to have to show (a) that the failure to enforce the employer mandate caused the plaintiff’s employer not to provide health insurance, (b) that the employer would provide the requisite form of health insurance if the tax were being enforced, and (c) that the plaintiff has  actually been damaged by the failure of their employer to provide health insurance. If, for example, the employer says it is not sure what it would do if the tax were imposed, a case challenging the delay is likely to fail for lack of standing. Or if it could be shown that the failure of the employer to provide health insurance actually permitted the employee to purchase equally good and similarly priced health insurance on an individual Exchange, a case challenging the most recent IRS rules would likewise likely fail for lack of standing.

On the other hand, there may well be plaintiffs out there with standing to sue.  There are about 18,000 firms with more than 50 employees in the United States. While some might make decisions on whether to provide health insurance that would be unaffected by the tax, if even 5% would admit to being affected by the tax — whose whole point, after all, is precisely to cause the result plaintiff will need to show — that would represent a universe of 900 potential businesses that almost surely employ more than 50,000 employees. It takes only one employee with standing to bring suit in order to challenge the legality of the President’s latest actions.

The best plaintiff would be an employee of a large corporation that has not provided “minimum essential coverage” (a/k/a/ health insurance) but which says, without equivocation, that it would do so if the employer mandate were in place. It would be best if the insurance the employer would have provided would cost the employee less than alternatives made available on the individual Exchanges.  Perhaps, for example, the employee worked for an employer that had extraordinarily healthy employees — a large gymnasium chain filled with youthful, mostly male, low-health-cost physical trainers , for example —  and could thus provide even minimally acceptable coverage via self insurance for less than the amount the employee could obtain on an individual Exchange.

Seth goes on to explain why these delays would violate the Administrative Procedures Act. It is worth a read.

One other thought. What about anti-competitive standing? How does this sound: would a business with 101 employees be able to bring suit, alleging that it is being harmed against a similarly sized employer with fewer than 100 employees. I recognize the equal protection claim would be a certain loser, but would that be enough to get someone into court to challenge these delays under the APA?

But the better question, is would anyone in the vast right-wing conspiracy have the cojones to sue to make Obamacare come quicker?