The Supreme Court will hear a constitutional challenge to the Obama-era Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
On Wednesday, the high court announced it would hear arguments in California v. Texas in its fall session, a case filed by a group of Republican-leaning states to challenge the law’s individual mandate that penalizes those who don’t purchase insurance. Arguments are planned for Nov. 10, one week after the general election.
The lawsuit contends that after the Republican-controlled Congress lowered the individual mandate penalty in the law to zero, effectively eliminating its effect, it could no longer be considered a constitutional tax imposed by Congress. The lawsuit further argued that once the individual mandate is found unconstitutional, the rest of the law, which guarantees coverage for approximately 20 million people under its provisions, must be discarded.
“Once the heart of the ACA — the individual mandate — is declared unconstitutional, the remainder of the ACA must also fall,” the lawsuit said.
In 2012, the Supreme Court determined in a 5-4 decision that the individual mandate was a legitimate “tax” authorized by the Constitution. However, conservative Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, Samuel Alito, and Clarence Thomas dissented, stating that the high court’s decision effectively rewrote the law because Congress characterized the individual mandate as a penalty.
In 2018, U.S. District Court Judge Reed O’Connor ruled in favor of those challenging the law, concluding that the entirety of Obamacare was unconstitutional. “The Court finds the Individual Mandate can no longer be fairly read as an exercise of Congress’s Tax Power and is still impermissible under the Interstate Commerce Clause — meaning the Individual Mandate is unconstitutional. Third, the Court finds the Individual Mandate is essential to and inseverable from the remainder of the ACA,” the decision read.
Several states then joined the lawsuit in defense of the law as it was appealed to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. At the end of 2019, the appeals court agreed in a 2-1 panel decision with the conclusion of the lower court that the individual mandate was no longer constitutional but referred the case back to the district court to determine if aspects of the law could remain in place without the individual mandate.
“The individual mandate is unconstitutional because it can no longer be read as a tax, and there is no other constitutional provision that justifies this exercise of congressional power,” the decision read.
“There was no reason for the district court to conclude that any provision in the ACA was inseverable from the coverage requirement. The majority does not necessarily disagree. I thus do not understand its decision to remand when, even on the majority’s analysis of the case, it could instead reverse and render a judgment declaring only the coverage requirement unconstitutional,” it later read, referring to the decision as “textbook judicial overreach.”
California, one of the states defending the law, successfully petitioned the Supreme Court to review the decision, claiming it was done so “in a way that creates uncertainty about the status of the entire Affordable Care Act.”
“Review is also warranted because the decision is incorrect as to standing, the merits, and severability,” it contends.
Chief Justice John Roberts, who joined the high court’s liberal minority to rule Obamacare constitutional and has been criticized by Republican leaders, including Vice President Mike Pence, will likely be the center of attention in the case.
