The Supreme Court shut down an attack on Obamacare in the most dismissive way possible.<\/b>
\nFor the third time since the Affordable Care Act became law in 2010, the Supreme Court rejected a call for it to sabotage that law \u2014 this time, in an unusually dismissive opinion. The Court\u2019s brief decision in California v. Texas, issued Thursday, ultimately concludes that the plaintiffs trying to undo the law had no business being in court in the first place. The case was brought by a bloc of Republican state officials, as well as two individuals who object to Obamacare. Their case centered on the law\u2019s individual mandate: As originally drafted, the Affordable Care Act required most Americans to either obtain health insurance or pay higher taxes, and the Supreme Court famously upheld this so-called \u201cindividual mandate\u201d in NFIB v. Sebelius (2012) as a valid exercise of Congress\u2019s power to levy taxes. In 2017, however, Congress amended Obamacare to zero out this tax. So, under current law, most Americans must either obtain health insurance or pay zero dollars. The Texas plaintiffs didn\u2019t just claim that this zeroed-out tax is unconstitutional (on the theory that a zero dollar tax can\u2019t be an exercise of Congress\u2019s taxing power), they claimed that the entire law must be declared invalid if the zero dollar tax is stuck down. It was an audacious ask of the Supreme Court \u2014 requesting the justices strike down the entire law despite only claiming that a single provision of Obamacare is unconstitutional. Especially since the provision that the plaintiffs challenged literally does nothing at all. The Court didn\u2019t even reach the question of whether or not the ex-mandate is constitutional. In a 7-2 ruling written by liberal Justice Stephen Breyer, the Court ruled that no one is allowed to bring suit to challenge a provision of law that does nothing. Four Republican appointees \u2014 Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett \u2014 joined Breyer\u2019s opinion. Suits about nothing are not allowed The idea that no one can challenge a legal provision that does nothing isn\u2019t especially controversial \u2014 or, at least, it wasn\u2019t controversial before numerous high-ranking Republicans rallied behind the Texas litigation. As the Supreme Court held in Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife (1992), no one may file a federal lawsuit challenging a law unless they have suffered an \u201cinjury in fact\u201d that is \u201cfairly traceable\u201d to the law that they are challenging. Yet that didn\u2019t stop 18 Republican state attorneys general from bringing this futile effort to kill Obamacare. In the end, they lost because of a simple fact: No one is injured by a law that requires them to pay zero dollars. As Breyer writes, \u201cthe IRS can no longer seek a penalty from those who fail to comply\u201d with the requirement to buy insurance. Thus, \u201cthere is no possible Government action that is causally connected to the plaintiffs\u2019 injury.\u201d Really, there\u2019s no need to say much more about this lawsuit. It was an absurd case brought under a risible legal theory that was widely mocked even by many outspoken opponents of Obamacare. The Wall Street Journal\u2019s editorial board labeled this lawsuit the \u201c Texas Obamacare Blunder .\u201d Yuval Levin, a prominent conservative policy wonk, wrote in the National Review that the Texas lawsuit \u201c doesn\u2019t even merit being called silly. It\u2019s ridiculous.\u201d And now the lawsuit is dead. As it turns out, even in a 6-3 conservative Supreme Court, there are some arguments that are too laughable to be taken seriously.<\/p>\n