Mike Sacks for the NLJ:

U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer in Washington cast a skeptical eye Thursday over the Justice Department’s effort to keep the House of Representatives’ health care suit out of court.

The House filed suit in November against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, alleging the administration illegally delayed the Affordable Care Act’s mandate that certain employers provide health insurance to their workers and unconstitutionally funded individual subsidies with money Congress refused to appropriate.

When DOJ’s Joel McElvain urged Collyer to dismiss the case on the basis that the House had no standing in an “abstract dispute” over legislative power, Collyer shot back.

“You don’t really think that,” the judge said, setting the tone for the rest of McElvain’s argument on behalf of the Department of Health and Human Services.

The case, as Collyer saw it, was over “how close have the secretaries [of HHS and Department of Treasury] come to the bone of the House’s authority” to appropriate funds under Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution.