U.S. Supreme Court rejects conservative challenge to Obamacare for a third time, this time on the grounds that the plaintiffs lacked standing to bring the legal action....Obama and President Biden comment....By editor Kathy Wray Coleman of Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com, Ohio's Black and alternative digital news leaders
Former President Barack Obama, the nation's first Black president
By Kathy Wray Coleman, associate publisher, editor-in-chief
CLEVELAND URBAN NEWS.COM, WASHINGTON, D.C- The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday rejected a conservative challenge to Obamacare, former president Barack Obama's signature universal healthcare initiative that is officially known as the Affordable Care Act, a federal law that lawmakers adopted in 2010 that brought about sweeping and revolutionary changes to the nation's healthcare system coupled with accessibility to heath care insurance to millions of ill-fated Americans.
The court, in a 7-to-2 decision, reversed the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals judgment out of New Orleans that upheld a district court ruling that found the plaintiffs in the case had standing to bring a challenge to the Affordable Care Act brought by Texas and 17 other Republican-led states, the administration of former President Donald Trump and two individuals.
In short, the high court, in California vs. Texas, said the plaintiffs lacked standing to bring the legal action before the trial court, and that the Fifth Circuit erred in upholding the order of standing by the district court.
While the Supreme Court on Thursday ruled on standing it never reached the merits of the case. Hence, it did not address the Fifth Circuit's finding that upheld the district court ruling that determined the provision of the Affordable Care Act that reduced the monetary penalty against individuals who fail to secure minimal health insurance to a zero amount to be unconstitutional.
That district court ruling on both standing and the constitutionality of the statute is now void, the court said, since there was no standing to bring the litigation before the trial court in the first place.
It is the third time that a Supreme Court challenge to Obamacare has survived legal scrutiny.
The majority opinion was written by Justice Stephen Breyer, who was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.
Justices Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch dissented.
Kavaunaugh, Comey-Barrett and Gorsuch are Trump appointees to the court, and Sotomayor and Kagan are Obama appointees.
Obama was elated and tweeted that "with millions of people relying on the Affordable Care Act for coverage, it remains, as ever, a BFD. And it's here to stay."
President Joe Biden, who served as vice president with Obama from 2009-2017, was equally excited and promised to expand Obamacare.
The legal battle relative to Thursday's Supreme Court decision centers around the now defunct legal mandate in Obamacare that levied a monetary penalty against individual Americans who failed to get minimal health insurance, a mandate upheld by the Supreme Court in 2012 in NFIB vs.Sebelius as a valid exercise of Congress's power to levy taxes.
But the court amended its 2012 decision in 2017, nullifying the individual mandate by reducing the monetary penalty to a zero amount.
The plaintiffs in this most recent challenge to Obamacare, which in addition to state officials and Trump's former administration, includes two individual out of Texas, argued that Congress lacks authority to issue a zero tax dollar penalty on uninsured Americans and that, in turn, it violated the minimum essential coverage provision of the Act.
As such, the plaintiffs argued that because that provision is unconstitutional, the entire Affordable Care Act must also be deemed unconstitutional.
The district court agreed on the issue of unconstitutionality and so did the Fifth Circuit appeals court, except the appeals court agreed only in part and ruled that rendering one provision of the Affordable care Act unconstitutional does not, in this instance, make the entire Act unconstitutional.
Accordingly, it reversed the district court ruling that constitutionality could not be severed and said it could in fact determine that a provision of the statute had been violated without discarding the Affordable Care Act in its entirety.
The Supreme Court, however, never reached the question of constitutionality in its decision issued on Thursday and instead reversed the Fifth Circuit's decision that upheld the standing order by the district court.
More specifically, the Supreme Court said the case was never properly before the trial court because the plaintiffs in the case were not required to pay a monetary penalty for failing to get insurance and had no direct monetary losses or damages.
In authoring the court's 57 -page opinion Justice Breyer repeatedly emphasized that the plaintiffs in the case could not show that they had standing to proceed in the matter.
"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," wrote Justice Breyer in writing for the majority. "They have failed to show that they have standing to attack
as unconstitutional the Act’s minimum essential coverage
provision."
This latest court decision over one of the most controversial public policy measures in the country's history puts to rest for now a 10- year battle by Republicans in Congress to upend the Affordable Care Act.
The Supreme Court has, in effect, toppled former president Trump's campaign promise to end Obamacare and keeps intact public policy that defines, in part, the legacy of Obama, the nation's first Black president, and Trump's all so articulate predecessor.
Polls show that most Americans approve of the Affordable Care Act, a Kaiser Foundation tracking poll revealing that some 55 percent of Americans are okay with it, though at least a third want some type of changes, including less governmental intrusion and greater access to affordable healthcare.
Congressional Republicans, in large part, remain disgruntled with Obamacare.
By Kathy Wray Coleman, associate publisher, editor in chief. Coleman trained for 17 years as a reporter with the Call and Post Newspaper in Cleveland Ohio and is an investigative and political reporter with a background in legal and scientific reporting. She is also a former 15-year public school biology teacher.
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