SCOTUS Rejects Challenge To Obamacare

The Supreme Court slammed Texas and other Republican-led states’ attempts on Thursday to take down Obamacare.

The 18 Republican states challenged whether the individual mandate, a requirement by law for people to purchase healthcare, can be cut from the rest of the law or if they can repeal the legislation in its entirety.

The court voted 7-2 that the plaintiffs were not required to pay anything under the mandate provision and therefore didn’t have the standing to bring the challenge to court.

“We conclude that the plaintiffs in this suit failed to show a concrete, particularized injury fairly traceable to the defendants’ conduct in enforcing the specific statutory provision they attack as unconstitutional. They have failed to show that they have standing to attack as unconstitutional the Act’s minimum essential coverage provision,” Justice Stephen Breyer wrote in his majority opinion.

“Therefore, we reverse the Fifth Circuit’s judgment in respect to standing, vacate the judgment, and remand the case with instructions to dismiss,” Breyer wrote.

Justices Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch disagreed with the court’s majority opinion.

“Today’s decision is the third installment in our epic Affordable Care Act trilogy, and it follows the same pattern as installments one and two,” Alito wrote in a dissent. “In all three episodes, with the Affordable Care Act facing a serious threat, the Court has pulled off an improbable rescue.”

Obamacare was previously challenged two other times, in 2016 to decide the constitutionality of the law’s contraception mandate, and in 2012 when the Supreme Court upheld the individual mandate in a 5-4 decision.