House Republicans released a draft of a resolution Thursday evening authorizing litigation against President Obama over executive actions he took to alter the employer mandate of the Affordable Care Act. House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) had said earlier this summer that he would sue the president over his use of executive actions, but the GOP leadership chose to focus the suit specifically on changes made to the health-care law, and not other executive actions by Obama. If passed by the Republican-controlled House, the resolution would empower Boehner to sue the president on the House's behalf. The House Rules Committee, run by Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Tex.), will meet Wednesday to discuss the draft resolution. “Today we’re releasing a draft resolution that will authorize the House to file suit over the way President Obama unilaterally changed the employer mandate," Boehner said in a statement. "In 2013, the president changed the health care law without a vote of Congress, effectively creating his own law by literally waiving the employer mandate and the penalties for failing to comply with it. That’s not the way our system of government was designed to work. No president should have the power to make laws on his or her own." The litigation will argue that by suspending the start date of the employer mandate, Obama operated outside of his constitutional power.

Democrats, including Obama himself, have dismissed the talk of a lawsuit as a stunt. In a statement on Thursday night, a spokesman for House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif) called the lawsuit a "distraction."

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