by Justice Stephen Breyer was joined by the court’s two other liberal justices and all but two conservatives, including Trump appointees Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. By finding that the red states and individual plaintiffs couldn’t contest a change to the law, the conservative justices were essentially shielded from grappling with larger questions about whether Obamacare was no longer constitutional.
The red states challenging the law, led by Texas, argued that Obamacare’s so-called individual mandate became unconstitutional after Congress zeroed out the law’s penalty for not having health insurance in a 2017 tax cut package. They said the entire law should fall because the mandate to purchase insurance, which remains on the books, was central to the law’s functioning.
The health care law has now survived all three of its major challenges before the Supreme Court since its enactment in 2010, and the newest ruling spares Congress from a challenging mission to shore up health coverage for millions during the coronavirus pandemic.
Obamacare had appeared to be in greater peril this fall when Republicans quickly filled the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s seat with Barrett, giving conservatives a 6-3 majority on the bench. However, Barrett’s vote to dismiss the case didn’t come as a surprise after oral arguments, when she questioned whether the red states had a case.
But even if the court had agreed the red states could challenge Obamacare and that the individual mandate was now unconstitutional, the majority of justices during oral arguments appeared reluctant to strike down other parts of the law. Two conservatives, Chief Justice John Roberts and Kavanaugh, suggested that the mandate could be easily severed from the law without affecting its remaining provisions. Congress also appeared to agree when it axed just the mandate penalty, Roberts said.
In a dissent, Justices Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch ultimately concluded that the disputed provisions of the law are not severable from the individual mandate and said they would have struck down all of them.
Good headline. The Court dismissed due to lack of standing, rather than ruled on the merits.
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