Could suing Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen be a way to end the debt ceiling hostage crisis?

Maybe it’s time to steal a page from the GOP playbook to come up with a remedy for ending the debt ceiling hostage crisis created by House Republicans. Remember how Republican state attorneys general and right-wing groups filed lawsuits in 2018 seeking to kill the Affordable Care Act by having it declared unconstitutional? The lawsuits failed to get the ACA ruled unconstitutional, but did succeed in gutting some key provisions, for example, allowing states to opt out of Medicaid expansion.

Well, Jonathan Zasloff, a professor of law at the UCLA School of Law, has come up with an intriguing proposal to solve the debt ceiling crisis that involves suing Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on the grounds that the debt ceiling is unconstitutional and Treasury should continue to make debt payments. Yellen has already notified Congress that the U.S. could default on its debt as early as June 1 if lawmakers fail to raise or suspend the debt ceiling.

The debt ceiling was first established by Congress in 1917 to make it easier to finance mobilization efforts in World War I. But its constitutionality was never really tested in court because the debt ceiling was routinely raised under both Democratic and Republican administrations. That changed in 1995 when the new Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich first weaponized it, and the situation has only worsened with the growing influence of nihilistic MAGA Republicans.

So after more than a century, it might finally be time to challenge the debt ceiling in court. And if Republicans start screaming about it, just remind them of what they did to gut the Voting Rights Act and campaign finance laws in the courts. There’s a strong basis in the Constitution to do away with the debt ceiling. The question is, what’s the best way to mount a legal challenge?

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