Pawlenty, last fall: Health reform lawsuit ‘not likely to be successful’

Last fall, when Esquire’s Mark Warren interviewed Tim Pawlenty, the governor said he didn’t believe a lawsuit on Tenth Amendment grounds would be successful in overturning the recently passed healthcare reform law. “Clearly, as the calendar turns toward 2012,” writes Warren, who reveals a never-before-published excerpt from his interview, “Pawlenty’s thinking has evolved.”

Pawlenty recently endorsed gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer, who authored the recent resolution claiming “sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution,” and last month he said the state would go ahead with a lawsuit to prevent health reforms from taking effect here, despite Attorney General Lori Swanson rejecting such a move.

But last year Pawlenty had a different point of view:

I’ve had lawyers look at that — and I agree with the concern that the federal government’s taking over too much, and there’s been a trampling of states’ rights — but as we look at the law, the law doesn’t favor our ability to do that. So we raise it as a philosophical concern, and a policy concern, that the federal government is continuing to encroach on many many areas that are substantially reserved for the states. But we don’t believe that we can base a successful legal strategy on that claim. I just don’t think a lawsuit — at least according to my lawyers’ view — is likely to be successful.