On November 10, 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments for California v. Texas, a case that will potentially decide the fate of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“ACA”).
Continue Reading Texas v. California: SCOTUS Hears Oral Arguments About the Constitutionality of the ACA
On December 18th, 2019, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals released a long-awaited decision on a significant challenge to the Affordable Care Act (“ACA”), affirming a lower-court ruling that we discussed in a previous post. In the lower-court ruling, the Federal District Court judge determined that the ACA’s individual mandate, which was reduced to $0 as a result of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, is no longer considered a tax and therefore Congress no longer has constitutional authority to enforce the mandate. Going one step further, the Federal District Court judge found that the individual mandate is not severable from the rest of the ACA, and thus held that the whole law is unconstitutional.
Continue Reading Update to Texas v. United States: Fifth Circuit Strikes Individual Mandate, Remands on Severability
Today the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit reached its widely anticipated decision in Texas vs. Azar, ruling that the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) individual mandate is unconstitutional as a result of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017’s elimination of the mandate’s financial penalty. The Court has remanded the case to the District Court to further address the question (known as the “severability” question) of whether the remaining provisions of the ACA are lawful in light of the decision regarding the individual mandate.
Continue Reading JUST IN: Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals Reaches Decision on Latest Case Involving Constitutionality of ACA
On Friday, December 14, 2018, a federal district court judge in Texas issued a widely anticipated opinion that struck down the entire Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“ACA”) as unconstitutional. The judge ruled in favor of the plaintiffs by determining that the “individual mandate”[1] is no longer a tax and is therefore an unconstitutional exercise of congressional authority. The judge also found that the individual mandate was inseverable from the rest of the ACA, which makes the entire ACA, not just the guaranteed issue and community rating provisions, unconstitutional.
Continue Reading Texas v. United States: Texas Federal Court “Strikes Down” the ACA
On February 26, 2018, twenty states (the “Plaintiffs”) jointly filed a lawsuit[1] in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas requesting that the court strike down the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“ACA”), as amended by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 (the “TCJA”), as unconstitutional. The Plaintiffs’ suit gained support from the White House last week, when Attorney General Jeff Sessions delivered a letter to House Speaker Paul Ryan on June 7, 2018 (the “Letter”), indicating that the Attorney General’s Office, with approval from President Trump, will not defend the constitutionality of the individual mandate – 26 U.S.C. 5000(A)(a) – and will argue that “certain provisions” of the ACA are inseverable from that provision.[2] The Letter indicates that this is “a rare case where the proper course is to forgo defense” of the individual mandate, reasoning that the Justice Department has declined to defend statutes in the past when the President has concluded that the statute is unconstitutional and clearly indicated that it should not be defended.
Continue Reading Following Repeal of the Individual Mandate, Twenty States Challenge the Affordable Care Act
The December 2017 Tax Reform Bill and the Repeal of the ACA’s Individual Mandate
The tax reform bill signed into law by President Trump on December 22, 2017, notably includes the repeal of the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA’s) individual mandate penalty. The individual mandate, which requires most Americans to maintain a basic level of health insurance coverage or pay a penalty to the federal government, had already endured multiple constitutional challenges and scrutiny by political pundits by the time it came into effect in 2014. The offering of affordable insurance coverage through the ACA’s healthcare exchanges was supported by the individual mandate, which was intended to ensure that enough healthy people would participate in insurance pools to balance out the sick, who cost more to insure.
Continue Reading Have the Reports of the Affordable Care Act’s Death Been Greatly Exaggerated?
Today, President Trump signed into law a sweeping tax reform bill passed by the House and the Senate on Wednesday that will materially affect virtually every sector in the economy, including, perhaps to a greater degree than others, the healthcare sector. Between the bill’s repeal of the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate penalty tax and other pertinent provisions, we might reasonably expect to see:
Continue Reading President Trump Signs Tax Reform Bill Into Law