This week, a federal district court in Texas ruled that the Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional. This Texas ruling does not overturn the ACA, as the case will have to make its way through the court system on appeal before it has the chance to invalidate the law nation-wide.
The lawsuit was brought by the Texas Attorney General and joined by other states’ attorneys general. The plaintiffs argued that since the individual mandate penalty for not having health insurance was reduced to $0, the entire law was unconstitutional. They took the position that the law was predicated on the ability of the government to tax individuals, and once the tax was removed, the law was no longer constitutional.
The judge ruling in favor of the Texas Attorney General. He opined that since the individual mandate was already removed from the ACA, the law could no longer be read as an exercise of Congress’ tax power. Without the power to tax, Congress did not have the ability to impose the other requirements of the law. The judge also stated that the individual mandate requirement could not be separated from the rest of the law, and since the individual mandate was eliminated, the entire law should be invalidated.
Initial discussion seems to indicate that the Texas ruling will not be upheld on appeal and that the ACA will continue to be the law of the land. The Department of Health and Human Services has announced- “The recent U.S. District Court decision regarding the Affordable Care Act is not an injunction that halts the enforcement of the law and not a final judgment. Therefore, HHS will continue administering and enforcing all aspects of the ACA as it had before the court issued its decision. This decision does not require that HHS make any changes to any of the ACA programs it administers or its enforcement of any portion of the ACA at this time.”
We will stay tuned to the progression of the appeals process.
