The Department of Justice sided with a district court ruling Monday that found the Affordable Care Act violated the Constitution. U.S. District Court Judge Reed O’Connor issued the ruling in December 2018, finding that the Obamacare individual mandate had been rendered unconstitutional due to the partial repeal Republicans passed in 2017. The ruling has been appealed to higher courts, but the DOJ endorsement could cause the ACA to be treated as unconstitutional while the case moves through the federal appeals process. “The Department of Justice has determined that the district court’s judgment should be affirmed,” the department announced in a Monday letter. “Individual Mandate can no longer be fairly read as an exercise of Congress’s Tax Power and is still impermissible under the Interstate Commerce Clause—meaning the Individual Mandate is unconstitutional,” wrote O’Connor in his opinion. CNN reported at the time: The case against the ACA, also known as Obamacare, was brought by 20 Republican state attorneys general and governors, as well as two individuals. It revolves around Congress effectively eliminating the individual mandate penalty by reducing it to $0 as part of the 2017 tax cut bill. The Republican coalition is arguing that the change rendered the mandate itself unconstitutional. They say that the voiding of the penalty, which takes effect next year, removes the legal underpinning the Supreme Court relied upon when it upheld the law in 2012 under Congress’ tax power. The mandate requires nearly all Americans to get health insurance or pay a penalty. President Donald Trump reacted to O’Connor’s ruling in December, praising his decision. Wow, but not surprisingly, ObamaCare was just ruled UNCONSTITUTIONAL by a highly respected judge in Texas. Great news for America! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 15, 2018 As I predicted all along, Obamacare has been struck down as an UNCONSTITUTIONAL disaster! Now Congress must pass a STRONG law that provides GREAT healthcare and protects pre-existing conditions. Mitch and Nancy, get it done! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 15, 2018 “Wow, but not surprisingly, ObamaCare was just ruled UNCONSTITUTIONAL by a highly respected judge in Texas. Great news for America!” Trump wrote. Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities for this original content, email [email protected]<doc-sep>The Trump administration told a federal appeals court Monday it thinks all of Obamacare is unconstitutional, marking an escalation in its fight against the 2010 law. Justice Department lawyers previously had argued that if the courts found Obamacare’s “individual mandate” is no longer constitutional, then a narrow slice of the program — consumer protections for people with pre-existing conditions — could not stand, either. A federal judge in Texas went much further in a December ruling, agreeing with plaintiff states who said the whole law should be invalidated. On Monday, administration lawyers said they’re fine with that. “The Department of Justice has determined that the district court’s judgment should be affirmed,” they wrote to the 5th U.S. Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals. Underscoring that point, they’re not urging the court to reverse any of U.S. District Court Judge Reed O’Connor’s decision. The administration’s position will breathe new life into the never-ending battle over Obamacare. Democrats say the administration is playing with fire by refusing to defend the federal health care law against the suit, which was filed last year by more than a dozen Republican-led states. They say President Trump is leveraging the courts to try and secure the full Obamacare repeal that eluded him in 2017, despite having a GOP-led Congress. “Tonight in federal court, the Trump administration decided not only to try to destroy protections for Americans living with pre-existing conditions but to declare all-out war on the health care of the American people,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said late Monday. Mr. Trump has found ways to chip away at parts of Obamacare. Most notably, he urged Republicans to zero out Obamacare’s mandate penalty for shirking insurance when it passed its tax overhaul. State GOP plaintiffs seized on that change, reasoning that if the mandate is no longer collecting money, is it no longer a “tax” as Chief Justice John G. Roberts said when upholding the health law in 2012. Blue-state attorneys general have argued in court the mandate is still on the books and, furthermore, Congress clearly intended to leave the rest of the law alone when it gutted the mandate. The simmering debate played a pivotal role in the midterm elections. Democrats said the GOP didn’t have a backup plan if the lawsuit succeeded, citing their previous failure to replace the law with something better. Democrats retook the House. Yet Josh Hawley, who joined the anti-Obamacare lawsuit as Missouri’s attorney general, defeated Sen. Claire McCaskill on election night and is now a sitting senator. The administration’s decision to fully back the lawsuit will loom large on Tuesday when Democrats plan to propose measures that would make Obamacare more generous and combat Mr. Trump’s changes to the program, which they’ve dubbed “sabotage.” Democrats are looking to regain their political footing, anyway, as Mr. Trump taunts them over the results of special counsel Robert Mueller’s two-year investigation, which found no collusion between his campaign and Russian meddlers. “The Barr summary clearly demonstrates that Republicans are trying to take your healthcare away,” Sen Brian Schatz, Hawaii Democrat, tweeted — a wry allusion to Attorney General William Barr’s summary of the Mueller findings. Yet Mr. Trump appears ready to dig in for a fight over health care, too. He’s fumed in recent weeks over late Sen. John McCain’s decision to give GOP repeal plans a thumbs down in 2017, and the White House’s fiscal 2020 budget says Obamacare should be replaced with fixed grants that allow states to spend federal health Sign up for Daily Newsletters Manage Newsletters Copyright © 2021 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.<doc-sep>This image was removed due to legal reasons. The Justice Department said in a court filing on Monday that it agreed with a federal judge in Texas who struck down the entire Affordable Care Act as unconstitutional. Advertisement The DOJ said that it is “not urging that any portion of the district court’s judgment be reversed.” “The Department of Justice has determined that the district court’s comprehensive opinion came to the correct conclusion and will support it on appeal,” DOJ spokesperson Kerri Kupec said in a statement. Under former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the Trump administration had a different position on this case and the ACA. They said at the time that they supported removing the requirement for covering preexisting conditions, but not getting rid of the law entirely. The stance on preexisting conditions may have hurt Republicans in the midterms, where it was frequently attacked by Democrats in Congressional races. It was after the administration came out against preexisting condition coverage that District Judge Reed O’Connor ruled in a case about the constitutionality of the individual mandate that the entire law should be struck down. O’Connor later clarified that the law would be upheld during the appeals process. Despite the unpopularity of taking away people’s health care, the DOJ now seems to agree with O’Connor. Democrats, unsurprisingly, are furious about the administration’s anti-ACA turn. The Democratic-controlled House of Representatives has moved to protect the ACA from this ruling. Lawyers for the House filed a brief with the appellate court that said that if the ruling is upheld “the consequences will be devastating.” Advertisement “While the Trump Administration broadens its monstrous ambitions from destroying protections for pre-existing conditions to tearing down every last benefit and protection the Affordable Care Act provides, Democrats are fiercely defending the law of the land and protecting all Americans’ health care,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a statement. Advertisement The case is currently in appeals with the Fif th Circuit Court of Appeals, who are notoriously conservative. The next stop after that will be the Supreme Court, which famously upheld the constitutionality of Obamacare in 2012.<doc-sep>It presented its position in a legal filing Monday with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit in New Orleans, where an appeal is pending in a case challenging the measure’s constitutionality. A federal judge in Texas ruled in December that the law’s individual mandate “can no longer be sustained as an exercise of Congress’s tax power” and further found that the remaining portions of the law are void. He based his judgment on changes to the nation’s tax laws made by congressional Republicans in 2017.<doc-sep>
The Department of Justice (DOJ) on Monday announced that it is siding with a district court ruling that found the Affordable Care Act unconstitutional. The move is an escalation of the Trump administration's legal battle against the health care law. ADVERTISEMENT The DOJ previously argued in court that the law's pre-existing condition protections should be struck down. Now, the administration argues the entire law should be invalidated. U.S. District Judge Reed O'Connor ruled in December that the Affordable Care Act's individual mandate is unconstitutional and that the rest of law is therefore invalid. The DOJ said Monday that it agrees the decision should stand as the case works its way through the appeals process in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit. "The Department of Justice has determined that the district court’s judgment should be affirmed," the department said in a short letter to the appeals court. The move is certain to prompt new denunciations from Democrats, who had already seized on the Trump administration's earlier call for the pre-existing condition protections to be struck down. That stance was a major issue in last year's midterm elections, and many Republican candidates in tough races struggled with whether to say they agreed with the Trump administration's position. Many legal experts in both parties think the lawsuit, which was brought by 20 GOP-led states, will not ultimately succeed. The district judge who ruled against the law in December is known as a staunch conservative. The case centers on the argument that since Congress repealed the tax penalty in the law's mandate for everyone to have insurance in 2017, the mandate can no longer be ruled constitutional under Congress's power to tax. The challengers then argue that all of ObamaCare should be invalidated because the mandate is unconstitutional. Most legal experts say legal precedent shows that even if the mandate is ruled unconstitutional, the rest of ObamaCare should remain unharmed, as that is what Congress voted to do in the 2017 tax law that repealed the mandate's penalty. Justin Wise contributed to this report, which was updated on March 26 at 5:50 a.m.