A federal judge in Texas said on Friday that the Affordable Care Act’s individual coverage mandate is unconstitutional and that the rest of the law must also fall.
MIAMI (CNN) – A federal judge in Texas said on Friday that the Affordable Care Act’s individual coverage mandate is unconstitutional and that the rest of the law must also fall.
Legal experts say the law will remain in effect for now, but the invalidation of the landmark health care law throws into doubt the future of health coverage for millions of Americans on the Obamacare exchanges and in Medicaid expansion. More than 4 million people have already signed up for 2019 coverage on the exchanges, and millions more are expected to pick plans before open enrollment ends Saturday.
The ruling, which is certain to be appealed, threatens to wipe away the Affordable Care Act’s protections for those with pre-existing conditions, which became a focal point of the midterm elections and helped Democrats take the House.
In his opinion, District Judge Reed O’Connor said 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.”
He also held that the individual mandate is “essential to and inseverable from the remainder of the ACA.”
But, Professor Tim Jost, of Washington and Lee University, said O’Connor declined to block the law for now.
“Judge O’Connor has declared the individual mandate unconstitutional and the rest of the Affordable Care Act invalid, but he has not blocked its continued operation,”Jost told CNN.
The case against the ACA, also known as Obamacare, was brought by 20 Republican state attorneys general and governors, as well as two individuals. It revolves around Congress effectively eliminating the individual mandate penalty by reducing it to $0 as part of the 2017 tax cut bill.
The Republican coalition is arguing that the change rendered the mandate itself unconstitutional. They say that the voiding of the penalty, which takes effect next year, removes the legal underpinning the Supreme Court relied upon when it upheld the law in 2012 under Congress’ tax power. The mandate requires nearly all Americans to get health insurance or pay a penalty.
The Trump administration said in June that it would not defend several important provisions of Obamacare in court. It agreed that zeroing out the penalty renders the individual mandate unconstitutional but argued that invalidates only the law’s protections of those with pre-existing conditions. These include banning insurers from denying people policies or charging them more based on their medical histories, as well as limiting coverage of the treatment they need.
But the administration maintained those parts of the law were severable and the rest of the Affordable Care Act could remain in place.
