A federal appeals court on Wednesday ruled a central feature of the Affordable Care Act was unconstitutional, but it ordered a trial judge to reconsider a ruling that invalidated the entire 2010 health care law.
The New Orleans-based Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in a 2-1 decision, ruled unconstitutional the ACA’s requirement that most people carry health insurance or pay a penalty.
The Supreme Court in 2012 upheld that insurance mandate based on Congress’s power to levy taxes, but lawmakers in 2017 reduced the penalty to $0 as part of Republicans’ tax overhaul package.
The appeals court said that change meant there was no longer a valid basis for upholding the mandate. The court, however, declined to answer the larger question in the case: What should happen to the rest of the health law with the mandate no longer in place?
A federal trial judge in Texas previously ruled that the whole law must be invalidated, but the Fifth Circuit ordered the judge to reconsider that conclusion. The appeals court said the judge needed to do a more detailed analysis of the sprawling law before concluding that any or all other parts of it must be thrown out.
“The district court opinion does not do the necessary legwork of parsing through the over 900 pages of the post-2017 ACA, explaining how particular segments are inextricably linked to the individual mandate,” the appeals court wrote.
Read the rest from the WSJ HERE and follow link below to a related story/opinion:
Federal Appeals Court Rules Obamacare Individual Mandate Is Unconstitutional
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