Justices reject new challenge to Obamacare
In a 7-2 vote, Supreme Court dismisses the latest attempt to void the Affordable Care Act, including protections for preexisting conditions.
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Thursday rejected a sweeping challenge to Obamacare pressed by Republican state attorneys and backed by former President Trump, ruling the plaintiffs had no standing to complain about a law imposing penalties on no one.
The decision in California vs. Texas preserves health insurance subsidies for more than 20 million Americans, and protections for tens of millions more whose preexisting medical conditions could otherwise keep them from obtaining coverage.
The Texas suit, the third major effort to strike down the Affordable Care Act, fizzled in a 7-2 decision. And this time, the court did not split along ideological lines.
Two Trump appointees — Justices Brett M. Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett — joined Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and the court’s three liberals in dismissing the Texas suit. Justice Clarence Thomas concurred. Justices Neil M. Gorsuch, also a Trump appointee, and Samuel A. Alito Jr . dissented.
In the ruling — and in a separate unanimous decision Thursday that pitted gay rights against religious liberties — Roberts and his colleagues surprised many by bringing together those on the right and left, rather than issuing the sort of close decision that is often seen in culture-war cases.
The justices did so by keeping the decision narrowly focused rather than making a broad pronouncement on the 2010 law, avoiding the issue of its constitutionality in saying simply that the suit should have been dismissed at the start.
Justice Stephen G. Breyer, writing for the court, said neither the state of Texas nor the two men who joined the suit suffered a “concrete, particularized injury” that gave them standing to sue.
Since Congress had reduced the law’s legal penalty for not having insurance to zero, the plaintiffs could not claim the government was forcing them to buy insurance, he said.
The ruling is a final verdict against Trump’s promise to “repeal and replace” the healthcare law sponsored by President Obama. Trump never devised a replacement, and both the Republican-controlled Senate and the high court, with a solidly conservative majority, rejected his legislative and legal bids to repeal it.
In the past, the court had struggled with the law’s mandate that people who could afford it must buy health insurance. Otherwise, they faced a tax penalty. In 2012, the justices by a 5-4 vote upheld this provision and the entire law on the grounds that Congress had broad power to impose taxes.
But in 2017, the Republican-controlled Congress reset the tax penalty to “$0.” An earlier move to repeal the entire law failed when Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) gave his thumbs-down shortly after surgery that revealed his fatal brain tumor.
That was expected to end the legal and political fight over Obamacare, since Congress had repealed the one provision that had triggered the most opposition.
But Texas Atty. Gen. Ken Paxton went back to court in 2018, claiming the law was unconstitutional because it rested on a mandate that now had no force.
While Paxton’s suit was derided by legal scholars, he had the backing of 17 other GOP state attorneys, and won a broad ruling from a federal judge in Fort Worth. A year later, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in a 2-1 decision agreed the law was on shaky ground, but did not issue a final ruling.
Alito wrote a long dissent to Thursday’s ruling, arguing the law should fall because the mandate is all but gone, and Gorsuch agreed.