CNN
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With the election looming, the U.S. Supreme Court is being asked to revisit the Affordable Care Act, the landmark 2010 health reform law that has been the target of legal attacks from conservatives, including a challenge to its mandate for free preventive health insurance.
Right-leaning lower courts have partially ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, finding parts of the mandate unconstitutional and jeopardizing the free provision of certain services, including some cancer tests and popular heart medications.
The Biden administration Thursday’s Request The Supreme Court’s overturning of the ruling highlights the fact that conservative attacks on the law are not over, even if the political will to repeal it has all but disappeared. Defenders of the law say that while it is not an existential threat to Obamacare, the mandate could improve the health of millions of Americans, especially those in marginalized communities, by improving their access to preventive care.
“Because the Court of Appeals has held Congress’ law unconstitutional and its legal rationale causes substantial practical harm, this Court’s review is warranted,” Attorney General Elizabeth Preloger wrote in a new petition to the justices. “Millions of Americans rely on insurance to cover preventive services at no out-of-pocket cost.”
The Supreme Court is unlikely to decide whether to take up the case until after the election. But the new appeal raises the question of whether a second Donald Trump administration, if elected, would defend the preventive care provision in its entirety. During his first term in office, Trump’s Justice Department refused to defend Obamacare in a lawsuit brought by Republican-led states. That case ended with the Supreme Court rejecting arguments by the Trump administration and a coalition of Republican-led states that the entire law should be struck down.
CNN has reached out to the Trump campaign for comment on the latest lawsuit, but the Harris campaign declined to comment.
In this case, the plaintiffs, Texas businesses and individuals, argued that insurers’ obligation to provide free care for certain preventive services violates the Appointments Clause. The conservative Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with some of the plaintiffs’ arguments, finding that the obligation, which arose from post-legislative recommendations by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, was unconstitutional.
Repealing Obamacare’s free preventive care requirements could mean Americans are denied important (and potentially life-saving) tests and services aimed at early disease detection, such as lung cancer screening for certain current and former smokers, colorectal cancer screening for adults ages 45-49, the use of statins to prevent cardiovascular disease, the HIV prevention strategy known as PrEP, and counseling referrals for pregnant and postpartum women at high risk for depression.
If allowed to stand, the ruling would apply to all lawsuits filed in Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi. The appeals court overturned parts of a trial judge’s ruling that would have blocked a nationwide mandate, instead limiting the ruling to apply only to the plaintiffs in that case.
Still, the Justice Department said in a filing Thursday that the appeals court’s decision could encourage other courts in the circuit to issue broader orders blocking the federal government’s enforcement of the orders “in their entirety.”
“The legal and practical implications of the Court of Appeals’ decision are enormous, and this Court’s review is warranted,” Preloger said.Number The Circuit Court’s decision “threatens to disrupt key parts of the ACA that provide health care protections to millions of Americans.”
For the first time since its implementation, Obamacare is not a primary focus of the current presidential campaign, but President Trump has continued to say he wants to replace it with a better plan, and Vice President Kamala Harris has repeatedly accused Trump of wanting to repeal the law.
The plaintiffs are represented by American First Legal, a conservative legal advocacy group led by former Trump administration officials, including former national security adviser Stephen Miller.
The challengers are represented by Jonathan Mitchell, the former Texas attorney general who helped write that state’s groundbreaking private abortion ban and who also represented Trump in the Colorado voting access case.
The case, known as Braidwood Management v. Becerra, is just the latest dispute over the Affordable Care Act that the justices are being asked to decide.
In its most recent major case, the conservative Supreme Court in a 7-2 vote in 2021 rejected arguments by President Trump and Republican-led states that the entire law should be struck down because Congress had zeroed out individual mandates that required Americans to buy health insurance and faced penalties if they didn’t.
Previous lawsuits attacking the insurance markets created under Obamacare have been defeated in the Supreme Court, as has the first legal attack on the individual mandate. But a complex decision in Obamacare’s first major case weakened the law’s expansion of Medicaid to more working-age adults.
More than a decade of legal battles over Obamacare have divided Republicans after a failed 2017 repeal attempt, and they have backed away from pledges to repeal it through legislation following Democratic victories in the 2018 midterm elections.
In the current Braidwood case, 5Number The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in June that parts of the free preventive health insurance mandate were unconstitutional because members of the task force that recommended the mandate were “principal officers” appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate. The ruling left intact the recommendations of the task force that existed when the Affordable Care Act was enacted.
The petition for review in the Supreme Court follows other recent decisions by the Supreme Court regarding the powers of administrative agencies.
