The First Decisions

Abstract

When a lawsuit challenges the constitutionality of a statute, the first step for the government is usually to file a “motion to dismiss,” which is an argument that a case should be thrown out because the plaintiffs’ arguments are simply not good enough to hold the court’s attention. A successful motion to dismiss can kill a case before it even gets off the ground. Many legal academics predicted that the challenge to Obamacare would not even survive a motion to dismiss, which is an almost sneering way of indicating how bad they thought the arguments against the law were.