AG Baker won’t sue feds over health care

ATLANTA – Georgia’s attorney general won’t sue the federal government over the controversial health care bill President Obama signed into law yesterday.

Attorney General Thurbert Baker, a Democrat, announced his decision in a letter to Republican Gov. Sonny Perdue, who had urged the state’s top lawyer to file the lawsuit. Nationally, more than a dozen states are questioning the Constitutionality of the law, which requires all citizens to have health insurance.

“While I understand that the new law is the subject of ongoing debate here in Georgia and around the nation, I do not believe that Georgia has a viable legal claim against the United States,” Baker said in his letter to Perdue. “Considering our state’s current severe budgetary crisis, with vital services like education and law enforcement being cut deeply, I cannot justify a decision to initiate expensive and time-consuming litigation that I believe has no legal merit.”

But, Baker’s decision not to sue doesn’t mean Georgia won’t file a lawsuit. Perdue could decide to proceed with a lawsuit without Baker’s cooperation, a number of media reports indicate.

“His refusal to participate doesn’t preclude us from moving forward,” Perdue’s spokesman Bert Brantley said, according to a report on WXIA-TV’s Web site. “We’ll make a decision on how to move forward and whether that means Georgia filing a lawsuit on its own, going by itself, or whether we join other states that have already filed.”