U.S. Supreme Court rejects Trump-backed challenge to Obamacare
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[June 18, 2021]
By Lawrence Hurley
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme
Court on Thursday rejected a Republican bid backed by former President
Donald Trump's administration to invalidate Obamacare, preserving the
landmark healthcare law for the third time since its 2010 enactment.
The 7-2 ruling declared that Texas and other challengers had no legal
standing to file their lawsuit seeking to nullify a law, formally called
the Affordable Care Act, that has enabled millions of Americans to
obtain medical coverage either through public programs or private
insurers. The decision was authored by liberal Justice Stephen Breyer.
The justices did not decide broader legal questions raised in the case
about whether a key Obamacare provision was unconstitutional and, if so,
whether the rest of the statute should be struck down. The provision,
called the "individual mandate," originally required Americans to obtain
health insurance or pay a financial penalty.
"Today's U.S. Supreme Court decision is a major victory for all
Americans benefiting from this groundbreaking and life-changing law,"
said Democratic President Joe Biden, whose administration opposed the
lawsuit.
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With three major challenges to Obamacare now having been resolved by the
justices, Biden added, "it is time to move forward and keeping building
on this landmark law." Biden also encouraged more Americans to use
Obamacare to obtain coverage.
Polling data has shown that Obamacare has become increasing popular
among Americans, including Republicans.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican who led the challenge,
vowed to continue to fight Obamacare. The individual mandate, Paxton
wrote on Twitter, "was unconstitutional when it was enacted and it is
still unconstitutional."
The law was the signature domestic policy achievement of Democratic
former President Barack Obama, who Biden served with as vice president.
"This ruling reaffirms what we have long known to be true: the
Affordable Care Act is here to stay," Obama said.
Breyer wrote that none of the challengers, including Texas and 17 other
states and the individual plaintiffs, could trace a legal injury to the
individual mandate, partly because a Republican-backed tax law signed by
Trump in 2017 had wiped out the financial penalty.
"Unsurprisingly, the states have not demonstrated that an unenforceable
mandate will cause their residents to enroll in valuable benefits
programs that they would otherwise forgo," Breyer wrote.
Twenty states including Democratic-governed California and New York and
the Democratic-led House of Representatives intervened in the case to
try to preserve Obamacare after Trump had refused to defend the law.
Conservative Justices Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch dissented from the
ruling. Alito called the decision an example of "judicial inventiveness"
and labeled the individual mandate "clearly unconstitutional."
Republicans fiercely opposed Obamacare when it was proposed, failed to
repeal it when they controlled both chambers of Congress and have been
unsuccessful in getting courts to invalidate the law, including in 2012
and 2015 Supreme Court decisions.
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The U.S. Supreme Court building in Washington, U.S. May 17, 2021.
REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst/File Photo
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Biden's administration in February urged the Supreme
Court to uphold Obamacare, reversing the position taken by the
government under Trump, who left office in January.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett, a Trump appointee whose 2020 confirmation
hearing included questions from Democrats over whether she would
vote to invalidate Obamacare, joined the majority in the ruling.
'RELENTLESS EFFORTS'
If Obamacare had been struck down, up to 20 million Americans stood
to lose medical insurance and insurers again could have refused to
cover people with pre-existing medical conditions. Obamacare
expanded the Medicaid state-federal healthcare program and created
marketplaces for private insurance.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat, called the ruling a "victory
for Democrats' work to defend protections for people with
pre-existing conditions against Republicans' relentless efforts to
dismantle them."
Biden has pledged to expand healthcare access and buttress Obamacare.
He and other Democrats had criticized Republican efforts against
Obamacare at a time when the United States was grappling with a
deadly coronavirus pandemic.
Despite the Supreme Court's 6-3 conservative majority, the
Republican Obamacare challengers came away disappointed in a ruling
in which all three liberal justices were joined by four of the six
conservative justices. Opposition to Obamacare seems to have receded
as a political issue for many Republicans as their party has
emphasized other matters such as immigration, voting restrictions
and hot-button "culture war" issues.
The Supreme Court previously upheld Obamacare by deeming the
financial penalty under the individual mandate a tax permissible
under the U.S. Constitution's language empowering Congress to levy
taxes. The penalty's elimination in 2017 meant the individual
mandate could no longer be interpreted as a tax provision and was
therefore unlawful, the Republican challengers argued.
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A federal judge in Texas in 2018 ruled that Obamacare, as structured
following the 2017 change, violated the Constitution and was invalid
in its entirety. The New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of
Appeals agreed that the individual mandate was unconstitutional but
did not rule that the entire law should be stricken.
(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Additional reporting by Trevor
Hunnicutt; Editing by Will Dunham)
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