The Supreme Court said Monday it will hear a Democratic bid to protect the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) individual mandate, teeing up a major dispute over the landmark health care law in the midst of the 2020 campaign.
A coalition of blue states and congressional Democrats filed petitions with the Court after the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the individual mandate in December 2019. The Trump administration is not defending Obamacare in the courts, leading congressional and state Democrats to intervene and take up the law’s defense.
Though the Supreme Court sustained the individual mandate on tax grounds in 2012, the Fifth Circuit said that rationale is no longer justifiable because of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. The Trump administration’s tax cuts set the financial penalty for failing to purchase health insurance at zero. Judge Jennifer Elrod said in the 2-1 decision that the mandate cannot be treated as a tax if it is not raising any money for the government.
Another question in the case is what should happen to the rest of the Obama administration’s signature health care law if the individual mandate is invalidated—a question of “severability,” in legal parlance. After striking down the mandate, the Fifth Circuit returned the case to a federal trial judge to determine whether other provisions of the ACA, or the statute in its entirety, should be struck down if the mandate is no longer operative. – read more
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