A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit is deciding the constitutionality of the 2010 Affordable Care Act (ACA) after hearing 90 minutes of arguments in a packed courtroom in New Orleans.
The panel will determine whether a federal district judge in Texas was correct in striking down the ACA because Congress eliminated the individual mandate penalty when it passed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. Nineteen states joined Texas in a February 2018 lawsuit arguing the ACA was no longer constitutional because the tax enforcing the mandate was central to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision declaring parts of the law constitutional.
In December 2018, Judge Reed O’Connor agreed. In March 2019, the U.S. Justice department, which was defending the law at the trial level, told the appeals court it would not be challenging the decision. That left 21 states supporting the ACA to defend the law. The states are known as “state intervener-defendants” and were given court permission to defend the law during and after the trial court stage.
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