Supreme Court Dismisses GOP Challenge to Affordable Care Act

(Bloomberg) -- The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Affordable Care Act, rejecting a challenge by Republican-controlled states and former President Donald Trump’s administration to a landmark law that provides health insurance to 20 million people.

The 7-2 ruling marks the third time the Supreme Court, despite its increasingly conservative makeup, has backed central parts of Obamacare, as the law is also known. The GOP has been trying to wipe out the measure since it was enacted in 2010 under Democratic President Barack Obama.

With health care accounting for a sixth of the U.S. economy, the stakes were massive. Advocates for patients, doctors, hospitals and insurance companies urged the court to uphold the law, warning of chaos should the measure be invalidated.

Opponents were trying to use a Republican-backed 2017 tax change to invalidate the entire law. The change eliminated a feature, the penalty for noncompliance with the individual mandate, that had been central in 2012 when the Supreme Court upheld the law as a legitimate use of Congress’ constitutional taxing power.

Writing for the court, Justice Stephen Breyer said the Texas-led group of states and two people who filed the latest suit -- later backed by the Trump administration -- lacked the right to go to court because they weren’t injured by the provision at the center of the case.

“Neither the individual nor the state plaintiffs have shown that the injury they will suffer or have suffered is fairly traceable to the allegedly unlawful conduct of which they complain,” Breyer wrote.

Justices Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch dissented, saying they would have let the suit go forward and dismantled much of the law.

“No one can fail to be impressed by the lengths to which this court has been willing to go to defend the ACA against all threats,” wrote Alito, who was in dissent in both previous ACA cases.

In a concurring opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas said he agreed with Alito’s analysis of the previous cases, but agreed with the majority that the latest challengers lacked the right to sue.

The White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the court’s opinion.

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The ACA expanded the Medicaid program for the poor, provided consumers with subsidies, created marketplaces to shop for insurance policies, required insurers to cover people with pre-existing conditions, and let children stay on their parents’ policies until age 26.

A federal appeals court had declared the individual mandate unconstitutional without the tax penalty and left doubt about the rest of the law. A group of Democratic-run states led by California and the U.S. House of Representatives defended the law.

The case is California v. Texas, 19-840.

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