The Kansas House is considering passing a resolution that would require that state’s attorney general, Steve Six, to join the 13 states that have filed lawsuits over the new health-care reform bill.

Apparently, either chamber of Kansas’ Congress can force the AG to take action, and the resolution doesn’t need to pass in the second chamber. There was similar pressure from Republican lawmakers in Ohio to join the suit, and Ohio’s attorney general, Richard Cordray explained why he wouldn’t do it: It’s unlikely to succeed.

So forcing them to take up the issue would violate another rule that attorneys general follow, and that’s not wasting the state’s money either defending or pursuing lawsuits they can’t win. But if Kansas wants to spend money it doesn’t have, so be it.

— Monica Potts

Monica Potts is a former senior writer at The American Prospect. She is working on a book about low-income women in her rural Arkansas hometown. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, New York, Vogue.com, The Daily Beast, The Trace, and Democracy.