Four months after the chamber authorized a lawsuit against President Barack Obama — and on the third try with an attorney after the first two lawyers bailed — the GOP-controlled House has formally filed its case, Speaker John A. Boehner announced Friday.  

“Time after time, the president has chosen to ignore the will of the American people and re-write federal law on his own without a vote of Congress,” the Ohio Republican said in a statement. “That’s not the way our system of government was designed to work.  

“If this president can get away with making his own laws, future presidents will have the ability to as well. The House has an obligation to stand up for the Constitution, and that is exactly why we are pursuing this course of action,” Boehner said. The lawsuit specifically challenges two changes Obama has made unilaterally to the 2010 health care law: Delaying, twice, the implementation of the “employer mandate” to offer health insurance to employees, and a cost-sharing program between the administration and insurance companies which Republicans say Congress never approved.  

The timing of the lawsuit is notable: It comes less than 24 hours after Obama announced the scale and scope of his executive actions to change immigration laws, which Boehner and other Republicans say is a vast overreach on the part of the White House.  

There has been discussion in the House GOP conference about whether to also sue Obama for his immigration orders, and on Friday, a Boehner aide confirmed that it was still something under consideration.  

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