Supreme Court upholds ObamaCare law, dismissing challenge from red states

The Court ruled that Texas and other plaintiffs lacked standing to challenge the law with their claims

The Supreme Court kept the Affordable Care Act alive Thursday, ruling in a 7-2 decision that Texas and 17 other states – plus two individuals – lacked standing to challenge its constitutionality.

Justice Samuel Alito, in a dissent joined by Justice Neil Gorsuch, railed against the majority’s decision in what he called “the third installment in our epic Affordable Care Act trilogy[.]” Alito asserted that, like in previous ObamaCare cases, the court stretched to find a way to keep the law in place.

“No one can fail to be impressed by the lengths to which this Court has been willing to go to defend the ACA against all threats,” Alito wrote. “A penalty is a tax. The United States is a State. And 18 States who bear costly burdens under the ACA cannot even get a foot in the door to raise a constitutional challenge. So a tax that does not tax is allowed to stand and support one of the biggest Government programs in our Nation’s history. Fans of judicial inventiveness will applaud once again.”

The states had argued that the law’s individual mandate was unconstitutional once it no longer carried a penalty because it had been justified as falling under the congressional power of taxation. They also claimed that the rest of the law could not survive without the mandate.

The court ruled that because the plaintiffs had not demonstrated any past or future harm, they were not in a position to bring the claim.

Regarding the individual plaintiffs, Breyer noted that the lack of penalty makes the individual mandate provision of the law unenforceable, thus removing any damage.

“To find standing here to attack an unenforceable statutory provision would allow a federal court to issue what would amount to ‘an advisory opinion without the possibility of any judicial relief,’” he wrote.

The decision reverses lower courts who had ruled that the plaintiffs did have standing, and that the individual mandate was unconstitutional without the penalty, which had been lowered to zero under the Trump administration. A federal district court ruled that without the mandate, the rest of the law could not survive, but a court of appeals ruled that it could remain.

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