United States Supreme Court upholds the Patient Protection Act for the *third* time

Repub­li­cans have spent the last few years pack­ing the Supreme Court full of extreme­ly right wing jus­tices and they still haven’t been able to knock down the Patient Pro­tec­tion Act with a legal chal­lenge. This was their third attempt, and it fared even worse than the last two did. Via SCO­TUS­Blog:

In a much-antic­i­pat­ed deci­sion, the Supreme Court on Thurs­day reject­ed anoth­er effort to dis­man­tle the [Patient Pro­tec­tion and] Afford­able Care Act, the health care reform law often regard­ed as the sig­na­ture leg­isla­tive achieve­ment of for­mer Pres­i­dent Barack Obama.

The jus­tices did not reach the main issue in the case: whether the entire­ty of the [PPA] was ren­dered uncon­sti­tu­tion­al when Con­gress elim­i­nat­ed the penal­ty for fail­ing to obtain health insurance.

Instead, by a vote of 7–2, the jus­tices ruled that nei­ther the states nor the indi­vid­u­als chal­leng­ing the man­date have a legal right to sue, known as standing.

Jus­tice Stephen Brey­er wrote the major­i­ty opinion.

He was joined by the oth­er two lib­er­al jus­tices, Jus­tices Sonia Sotomay­or and Ele­na Kagan, as well as four con­ser­v­a­tives: Chief Jus­tice John Roberts and Jus­tices Clarence Thomas, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Bar­rett. Jus­tice Samuel Ali­to wrote a dis­sent and was joined by Jus­tice Neil Gorsuch.

The major­i­ty, con­cur­ring, and dis­sent­ing opin­ions can be read here.

“The Con­sti­tu­tion gives fed­er­al courts the pow­er to adju­di­cate only gen­uine ‘Cas­es’ and ‘Con­tro­ver­sies,’ ” Jus­tice Brey­er wrote, cit­ing Arti­cle III, §2.

“That pow­er includes the require­ment that lit­i­gants have stand­ing. A plain­tiff has stand­ing only if he can “allege per­son­al injury fair­ly trace­able to the defendant’s alleged­ly unlaw­ful conduct and like­ly to be redressed by the request­ed relief.” 

“The mat­ter is not sim­ply tech­ni­cal,” Brey­er added lat­er in the opinion. 

“To find stand­ing here to attack an unen­force­able statu­to­ry pro­vi­sion would allow a fed­er­al court to issue what would amount to ‘an advi­so­ry opin­ion with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of any judi­cial relief.’ It would threat­en to grant unelect­ed judges a gen­er­al author­i­ty to con­duct oversight of deci­sions of the elect­ed branch­es of Gov­ern­ment.” Brey­er cit­ed Mar­shal­l’s dis­sent in Los Ange­les v. Lyons and Steel Co. v. Cit­i­zens for Bet­ter Env­i­ronment to but­tress his point. 

“Today’s U.S. Supreme Court deci­sion is a major vic­to­ry for all Amer­i­cans ben­e­fit­ing from this ground­break­ing and life-chang­ing law. It is a vic­to­ry for more than 130 mil­lion Amer­i­cans with pre-exist­ing con­di­tions and mil­lions more who were in imme­di­ate dan­ger of los­ing their health care in the midst of a once-in-a-cen­tu­ry pan­dem­ic,” said Pres­i­dent Joe Biden in a statement.

“After more than a decade of attacks on the [Patient Pro­tec­tion and] Afford­able Care Act through the Con­gress and the courts, today’s deci­sion – the third major chal­lenge to the law that the U.S. Supreme Court has reject­ed – it is time [that we] move for­ward and keep build­ing on this land­mark law.”

“That is what we are doing thanks to the Amer­i­can Res­cue Plan, which has low­ered health care costs and expand­ed cov­er­age for mil­lions of Amer­i­cans through the [Patient Pro­tec­tion Act]. More than 1.2 mil­lion Amer­i­cans signed up for cov­er­age under the law through a spe­cial enroll­ment peri­od I estab­lished dur­ing this pan­dem­ic, which peo­ple can still sign up for through August 15th. And I look for­ward to work­ing with the Con­gress to build on this law so that the Amer­i­can peo­ple will con­tin­ue to have access to qual­i­ty and afford­able health care.”

Demo­c­ra­t­ic state attor­neys gen­er­al vocal­ly cel­e­brat­ed the rul­ing, which they helped bring about by defend­ing the law when the Trump regime refused to.

“Thanks to today’s Supreme Court vic­to­ry, hun­dreds of thou­sands of Wash­ing­to­ni­ans get to keep their access to afford­able health care,” said Wash­ing­ton State Attor­ney Gen­er­al Bob Ferguson.

“It’s hard to over­state the impor­tance of this vic­to­ry. We will con­tin­ue fight­ing for increased access to afford­able care.”

“For the past decade, the health care of mil­lions of Amer­i­cans has been in legal jeop­ardy. With today’s rul­ing, the Supreme Court has final­ly put this issue to rest,” said Ore­gon Attor­ney Gen­er­al Ellen Rosenblum.

“If the last fed­er­al admin­is­tra­tion and the states fight­ing the [PPA] had had their way, mil­lions upon mil­lions of Amer­i­cans, includ­ing many Ore­go­ni­ans, would have been left scram­bling for health care. I’m proud of the hard work of the coali­tion of states that worked togeth­er to make sure this sys­tem was not dismantled.”

Wash­ing­ton State Insur­ance Com­mis­sion­er Mike Krei­dler said the rul­ing would ben­e­fit mil­lions of Amer­i­cans and was in keep­ing with sound jurisprudence.

“The chal­lenge was based on a shaky legal argu­ment inspired by mean-spir­it­ed pol­i­tics and their insti­ga­tors who have con­sis­tent­ly failed to acknowl­edge the ben­e­fits of the law since it took effect. More Amer­i­cans today have health cov­er­age and depend on the numer­ous ben­e­fits and pro­tec­tions – espe­cial­ly now, as our coun­try fights through the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic,” said Kreidler.

NPI is delight­ed that the Court has turned back this lat­est ill-con­ceived chal­lenge to the Patient Pro­tec­tion Act. The last thing the Unit­ed States need­ed was for mil­lions of its peo­ple to be in dan­ger of los­ing their health­care. We need to go for­ward, not back­ward. For­ward means lay­ing the ground­work for a respon­si­ble tran­si­tion to sin­gle pay­er health­care (M4A!) that will be tru­ly uni­ver­sal in scope.