Texas Judge Strikes Down Obama’s Affordable Care Act as Unconstitutional

[FriendlyFire]

The Democrats are going to take away your per-existing condition coverage vote Republican to protect the ACA
And all the Cultists cheered.

Might as well repeal ACA, without young healthy people to help subsides, profitable insurance sending funds to prop up failing insurance and the money needed for per-existing conditions. The sane thing would be to either pass a law fixing the per-existing condition money black hole or removing it entirely. Either way Trump is delivering hes election promise to give it to hes own supporters good and hard

Texas Judge Strikes Down Obama’s Affordable Care Act as Unconstitutional

WASHINGTON — A federal judge in Texas struck down on Friday the entire Affordable Care Act on the grounds that its mandate requiring people to buy health insurance is unconstitutional and the rest of the law cannot stand without it.

The ruling was on a lawsuit filed this year by a group of Republican governors and state attorneys general.

At issue was whether the health law’s insurance mandate still compelled people to buy coverage after Congress reduced the penalty to zero dollars as part of the tax overhaul that President Trump signed last December. When the Supreme Court upheld the mandate as constitutional in 2012, it was based on Congress’s taxing power. Congress, the court said, could legally impose a tax penalty on people who do not have health insurance.

But in the new case, the plaintiffs, led by Texas, argued that with the penalty zeroed out, the individual mandate had become unconstitutional — and that the rest of the law could not be severed from it.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/14/health/obamacare-unconstitutional-texas-judge.html?action=click&module=Top Stories&pgtype=Homepage

 

[Estebonrober]

The Democrats are going to take away your per-existing condition coverage vote Republican to protect the ACA
And all the Cultists cheered.

Might as well repeal ACA, without young healthy people to help subsides, profitable insurance sending funds to prop up failing insurance and the money needed for per-existing conditions. The sane thing would be to either pass a law fixing the per-existing condition money black hole or removing it entirely. Either way Trump is delivering hes election promise to give it to hes own supports good and hard

Wow. That is impressive legal wrangling there. I'm not only blown away by the tactic, I'm seriously impressed by the outright cynicism employed here.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Even when they lose, they win.

They couldn't stop Obamacare from passing, so they failed to implement.

They couldn't overturn it in the Supreme Court, so they launched a thousand other lawsuits and wrote laws to undercut it at the state level.

They couldn't repeal it so, they removed key provisions at the margins.

And now they've found a sympathetic idealogue on the courts they have been packing with group-interviewed, non-vetted judges to take it all the way. Kavanaugh and Gorsuch will make sure it sticks on appeal, to boot.

The system is completely broken.

 

[JollyRoger]

This flies in the face of already and recently established Supreme Court precedent. I know this judge and have had both a civil and criminal case in his court. He is very much an activist right wing hack.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

And we now have an entire federal judiciary system packed with people just like him.

Barring an unprecedented (and extremely unlikely) purge or court packing scheme writ large, we will be living with an extremely tilted legal system for decades. This sucks, but could be survivable on its own.

Instead we're watching the system die not by drowning in Grover Norquist's bathtub but by a thousand cuts. Even a dramatic showdown and landslide can't reverse the situation permanently unless major Democratic majorities can be sustained through the 2020s along with the Presidency. It will take that long in my estimation to rebuild our institutions.

And we can't write off the fact that as the GOP does, so the Democrats watch. I cannot trust them fully to avoid using the same playbook going forward and doing their own part to break the system.

 

[Tristan_C]

Hi. I'm just here to watch people discover qualms they never knew they had with a federal judge issuing nationwide injunctions.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Hi. I'm just here to watch people discover qualms they never knew they had with a federal judge issuing nationwide injunctions.

So now we shouldn't have courts because they might rule against our interests on some issues?

Why is the first reaction of the radical right to attack the institution itself and attempt to discrete the idea of rule of law rather than show any interest in reform? You're attitude of winner takes all, at all times and in all things is destroying the country. This is a gross miscarriage of justice and a settled matter re-opened in a naked exercise of power.

 

[Gori the Grey]

This flies in the face of already and recently established Supreme Court precedent.

Yeah, it was challenged on exactly this grounds and withstood the challenge.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Yeah, it was challenged on exactly this grounds and withstood the challenge.

The difference is that since then the GOP removed the individual mandate.

The judge ruled that without the mandate, the law is unworkable and has to go. He did this because he can't declare the law itself illegal as that would directly contradict the Supreme Court. It's the legal version of two wrongs making a right.

Normally we'd expect the ruling to be that removing the mandate was unconstitutional because it hobbled a constitutional law. He flipped that right on his head because essentially, might makes right.

Even when they can't repeal the law, they can put it in striking range of their kangaroo courts to finish the job.

 

[FriendlyFire]

Hi. I'm just here to watch people discover qualms they never knew they had with a federal judge issuing nationwide injunctions.

Its fine Trump will just issue an executive order protecting per-exisiting conditions
MAGA

Trump keeps promising to protect pre-existing condition coverage

President Donald Trump promised again Wednesday to protect coverage for Americans with pre-existing conditions. His repeated pledges ahead of the Nov. 6 midterm elections mask the fact that his administration has backed efforts to undermine the popular Affordable Care Act provision.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/24/tru...pre-existing-conditions-as-midterms-loom.html

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Part of me thinks this is so brazen it can not possibly withstand court challenge. Unfortunately, this will go straight to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court which is Republican because McConnell stole a nomination from Obama. Then they doubled down and rammed through a potential rapist who vowed revenge on his opponents.

It's wild.

They won. Obamacare is over. What's next, food stamps and preschool? The State and Education Departments and the EPA?

 

[JollyRoger]

Hi. I'm just here to watch people discover qualms they never knew they had with a federal judge issuing nationwide injunctions.

He didn't issue an injunction as that would have fast tracked him being overruled.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

@JollyRoger
Is it your opinion this is a deliberate subversion of the judicial process?

If so, are there broader implications for this new ruling? Can this result be repeated?

 

[Wastl]

Part of me thinks this is so brazen it can not possibly withstand court challenge. Unfortunately, this will go straight to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court which is Republican because McConnell stole a nomination from Obama. Then they doubled down and rammed through a potential rapist who vowed revenge on his opponents.

It's wild.

They won. Obamacare is over. What's next, food stamps and preschool? The State and Education Departments and the EPA?

Meh, it's not really over yet. The same five judges who upheld Obamacare are still on the court. The only ones who have been replaced already argued against it from the get go. As long as Roberts sticks to his earlier vote, and with this kind of brazen activism against his earlier ruling I can't really see that changing, the Surpreme Court should still overturn this latest court ruling.

On top of that, Kavanaugh has been surprisingly "moderate" in his rulings so far. They didn't really mean much at all, and maybe he's just laying low for a while, but with his general interest in precedent not being easily overruled, he could perhaps even join the old majority. I wouldn't necessarily bet on it, but I wouldn't rule it out either.

 

[onejayhawk]

Meh, it's not really over yet. The same five judges who upheld Obamacare are still on the court. The only ones who have been replaced already argued against it from the get go. As long as Roberts sticks to his earlier vote, and with this kind of brazen activism against his earlier ruling I can't really see that changing, the Surpreme Court should still overturn this latest court ruling.

On top of that, Kavanaugh has been surprisingly "moderate" in his rulings so far. They didn't really mean much at all, and maybe he's just laying low for a while, but with his general interest in precedent not being easily overruled, he could perhaps even join the old majority. I wouldn't necessarily bet on it, but I wouldn't rule it out either.

The Judge addresses the Supreme Court decision using the language of the Congressional debate. There are literally hundreds of times the individual mandate was called vital, essential, necessary, indispensable, etc. The mandate has since been removed.

Here is a quote from the text of the decision.

Congress stated many times unequivocally — through enacted text signed by the President — that the Individual Mandate is 'essential' to the ACA. And this essentiality, the ACA’s text makes clear, means the mandate must work ‘together with the other provisions’ for the Act to function as intended.
​

J

 

[hobbsyoyo]

The Judge addresses the Supreme Court decision using the language of the Congressional debate. There are literally hundreds of times the individual mandate was called vital, essential, necessary, indispensable, etc. The mandate has since been removed.

Here is a quote from the text of the decision.

Congress stated many times unequivocally — through enacted text signed by the President — that the Individual Mandate is 'essential' to the ACA. And this essentiality, the ACA’s text makes clear, means the mandate must work ‘together with the other provisions’ for the Act to function as intended.
​

J

A rationale court would therefore strike down the repeal of the mandate, not repeal the entire law.

Meh, it's not really over yet. The same five judges who upheld Obamacare are still on the court. The only ones who have been replaced already argued against it from the get go. As long as Roberts sticks to his earlier vote, and with this kind of brazen activism against his earlier ruling I can't really see that changing, the Surpreme Court should still overturn this latest court ruling.

On top of that, Kavanaugh has been surprisingly "moderate" in his rulings so far. They didn't really mean much at all, and maybe he's just laying low for a while, but with his general interest in precedent not being easily overruled, he could perhaps even join the old majority. I wouldn't necessarily bet on it, but I wouldn't rule it out either.

I hope you're right. We'll find out soon enough.

 

[Ajidica]

On top of that, Kavanaugh has been surprisingly "moderate" in his rulings so far. They didn't really mean much at all, and maybe he's just laying low for a while, but with his general interest in precedent not being easily overruled, he could perhaps even join the old majority. I wouldn't necessarily bet on it, but I wouldn't rule it out either.

I'm willing to bet my car that the day after Kavanaugh was sworn in, Roberts took him aside and told him to be nice and friendly and moderate for the next few years until his nomination fight fades into the background. Roberts, by all accounts, cares deeply for the image* of the court and having Mr. Angry immediately take an axe to [insert public policy here] would make that job difficult. Much easier to get Mr. Angry to lay low for a year or two.

 

[JollyRoger]

The Judge addresses the Supreme Court decision using the language of the Congressional debate.

J

Actually, the conservative Justices on the Court generally abhor the use of legislative history, especially floor debate, to decide. They look solely to the language in the statute.* Gorsuch is very much in that camp. Plus, Congress, by legislation, took away the mandate without touching the rest, so from a Conservative justice perspective, that indicates that Congress thought the ACA could work without the mandate. Unlike this judge, they will look to 2017, not 2010, for analysis, as it is a 2017 amendment that is the relevant act of Congress. Roberts surely won't change his vote based on legislative history. I say this as someone who has read every Supreme Court opinion since 2007 and posted the blueprint here that Roberts eventually utilized in upholding the mandate.

Not the language of "through enacted text signed by the President" - that is not some Congressman bloviating on the Senate or House floor - that is in the text of the statute - which was overridden by strikeout or new text in 2017.

* I will admit that they sometimes sneakily use legislative history to get to a result they want, but not as blatantly as they would need to do here.

 

[Berzerker]

The mandate was not popular, it was hated by many people...and if its integral to Obamacare, then so be it. Now health reform will have to be more bi-partisan, the incoming Democrat House will fashion something that Trump will sign or that can survive a veto. I'd like to see opinion polls on a single payer system, I'd bet more voters support it than Congresscritters.

A rationale court would therefore strike down the repeal of the mandate, not repeal the entire law.

Why cant Congress repeal a law?

 

[Patine]

The Democrats are going to take away your per-existing condition coverage vote Republican to protect the ACA
And all the Cultists cheered.

Might as well repeal ACA, without young healthy people to help subsides, profitable insurance sending funds to prop up failing insurance and the money needed for per-existing conditions. The sane thing would be to either pass a law fixing the per-existing condition money black hole or removing it entirely. Either way Trump is delivering hes election promise to give it to hes own supporters good and hard

The United States is the only nation considered socially, politically, and economically First World, other than the so-called "Five Dragons" of East Asia (one of which, Hong Kong, is not a sovereign nation and never has been, but is always included in the parlance) that does not have national or public health-care. This is NOT matter of "liberty" or "the American Dream," - for a nation as wealthy and developed as the United States, it is, in fact, an embarassment - or at least it SHOULD be, with any sense of perspective!