Get updates on ObamaCare related lawsuits and find out how a series of lawsuits targeting ObamaCare’s key provisions have shaped the health care la...
Although there have been a number of lawsuits focused on the ACA, there are only a few important ones that made it to the Supreme Court and affecte...
On Oct 26, 2015 the Pacific Legal Foundation filed a petition stating that ObamaCare violates the Constitution’s Origination Clause which requires...
The ObamaCare subsidies lawsuits were a series of different lawsuits against the legality of subsidies. The subsidy lawsuits include King v. Burwel...
The subsidy lawsuits all shared the same basic challenge: that subsidies are illegal unless a state has set up it’s own health insurance marketplac...
House Republicans, advocated for by John Boehner, attempted to sue the President over delaying the “employer mandate”. The irony of this lawsuit is...
In January 2014 Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wis) filed a lawsuit attempting to block the federal government from helping to pay insurance costs of membe...
Under the law for-profit employers who offer health coverage must offer insurance benefits for birth control and other reproductive health services...
Is it constitutionally permissible to require millions of people to purchase health coverage to stabilize our national health-care market? Is it co...
Some of the ObamaCare related lawsuits bring up important questions about religious freedom and the responsibilities of employers and the governmen...
The state attorneys general, led by Texas, filed their lawsuit with a Texas district court in February 2018. The crux of their argument was that the Supreme Court’s 2012 decision in National Federation of Independent Business v.
Striking down the ACA would have increased the number of uninsured people by 21 million, or 69 percent, the Urban Institute estimated in October 2020.
Those filing Supreme Court briefs opposing the Trump Administration and Republican states’ arguments included:
A week after the Senate had approved its draft of the ACA, 14 state attorneys general from Alabama, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Michigan, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Virginia, and Washington, signed a letter to Democratic Congressional leadership requesting the removal of the Nebraska provision from the Senate draft of the act. The letter, organized by South Carolina’s Attorney General Henry McMaster (R), left open the possibility for further litigation. Democrats at the time said that the letter stemmed from political motivations on the part of the signees, some of whom were running in upcoming elections.
President Barack Obama signed the Senate version of the ACA into law on March 23, 2010. After Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) died and Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) won his seat, Democratic leadership feared they would not be able to pass another version through the Senate having lost their filibuster -proof majority. Instead, leadership opted to make changes to the law by passing the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act a week later, which, among its amendments, included the removal of the Nebraska provision from the ACA.
The case was first heard in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida by Judge Roger Vinson. He ruled that the individual mandate fell outside of the regulatory powers granted to Congress by the Commerce Clause, while also rejecting the claim that requiring states to pay for a portion of expanded Medicaid coverage violated state sovereignty. Judge Vinson concluded that the “individual mandate and the remaining provisions are all inextricably bound together in purpose and must stand or fall as a single unit.” The plaintiffs then appealed the case to the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta, Georgia. On August 12, 2011, in a 2-1 ruling, the court also found the individual mandate to be unconstitutional. In a departure from the lower court’s ruling, however, the Eleventh Circuit did not find the individual mandate to be inextricable from the ACA, instead finding that the rest of the law should stand.
In a 5-4 opinion written by Chief Justice John Roberts, the Court upheld the individual mandate as falling within Congress’ power to levy taxes , as opposed to its Commerce Clause authority. However, the justices found the Medicaid expansion to be unconstitutional due to the withholding of funds that would follow from noncompliance with expansion.
Hobby Lobby, religious organizations and closely-held for-profit companies became eligible for an exemption from the Affordable Care Act's contraception mandate. Under the exemption, organizations could notify the government of their religious objections to contraception, which would then make an arrangement with the insurance company to provide contraceptive coverage to the employees. However, some religious organizations objected to the accommodation, arguing that they would still be complicit in providing contraception to their employees.
Lew. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare, was passed in its finality on March 21, 2010, and signed into law by President Barack Obama on March 23, 2010. Many aspects of the law prompted litigation, particularly the law's individual and employer mandate provisions, Medicaid expansion, and certain tax issues.
The Affordable Care Act stated that individuals were eligible for tax credits to help pay for plans "which were enrolled in through an Exchange established by the State." However, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) granted the tax credits regardless of whether the exchange was established and operated by a State (including a regional exchange or subsidiary exchange) or by HHS..
Halbig v. Sebelius was filed with the intention of nullifying the tax credits obtained through the federal exchange. On July 22, 2014, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled in favor of Halbig in Halbig v. Burwell. The court determined that the law's language granting tax credits to those using exchanges "established by the State" meant that only those using the state exchanges were eligible for tax credits, but not those using the federal exchange. Judge Thomas Griffith, who wrote the opinion of the court, explained the discrepancy, writing, "On its face, this provision authorizes tax credits for insurance purchased on an Exchange established by one of the fifty states or the District of Columbia. See 42 U.S.C. § 18024 (d). But the Internal Revenue Service has interpreted section 36B broadly to authorize the subsidy also for insurance purchased on an Exchange established by the federal government under section 1321 of the Act." The decision came in at 2-1.
v. Sebelius. The Supreme Court decided the case on June 28, 2012. In a 5-4 decision, the court upheld the Affordable Care Act's individual mandate as a legitimate exercise of Congress' Article I power to lay and collect taxes. Chief Justice John Roberts, delivering the opinion of the court, wrote, "The court today holds that our Constitution protects us from federal regulation under the Commerce Clause so long as we abstain from the regulated activity. But from its creation, the Constitution has made no such promise with respect to taxes." The Court declined to rule whether the Affordable Care Act was also a legitimate exercise of Congress' Article I power to regulate interstate commerce.
The case hinged on the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) passed by Congress in 1993. RFRA stated that the federal government "shall not substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion even if the burden results from a rule of general applicability.".
On February 24, 2016, the states of Texas, Kansas, Indiana, Nebraska, Louisiana and Wisconsin filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services over the health insurance providers fee. The health insurance providers fee was established by the Affordable Care Act and was a fee charged to insurers to fund the advanced premium tax credits that assisted individuals with purchasing insurance on the health insurance exchanges. Although Congress passed a law in December 2015 that lifted the fee for one year in 2017, the fee was collected for 2014, 2015 and 2016.
The intention of the law was that states would set up their own marketplaces, and that subsidies would be available to those who shopped on the marketplaces (be they state or federal or joint). The law didn’t foresee the majority of state deferring setting up and running their marketplaces to the federal government ( healthcare.gov is a federal marketplace). The states that deferred their marketplaces did so based on the idea that subsidies would be available through the federal website. These numbered 36 states, since Oregon and Nevada now use the federal website, and included all Republican led states except Idaho.
IRS v. Indiana is tied to the subsidies lawsuits, but tackles a different subject, the legality of the employer mandate. The legality of the employer mandate is tied to the subsidy lawsuits since the lawsuit takes issue with the IRS’s authority to clarify rules pertaining to the Affordable Care Act.
Burwell was a lawsuit that charged that the Affordable Care Act only made subsidies available to individuals in states that had set up their own health insurance exchanges (marketplaces). Since 36 states exchanges were run by the federal government, the majority of people in the US who are using health insurance subsidies could lose them if Halbig won.
On June 30, 2014 the Supreme Court ruled that Hobby Lobby did not have to provide contraception coverage. Since they still had to provide minimum coverage, which includes everything required by law, except contraception, the outcome was that the Exchange itself would provide the contraceptive part of the employees’ health care. This ruling will likely have the same outcome for other for-profit businesses and help to widen the “narrowly written religious exemption” that was already in place.
The subsidy lawsuits include King v. Burwell, Halbig v. Burwell, Pruitt v. Burwell, and to some extent Indiana v. IRS. All suits were originally titled “v. Sebelius” until Kathleen Sebelius was replaced by Sylvia Mathews Burwell as United States Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS). The outcome of these lawsuits decided the legality of subsidies in 36 states that had deferred their state based marketplaces to the federal government HealthCare.Gov.
House Republicans, advocated for by John Boehner, attempted to sue the President over delaying the “employer mandate”. The irony of this lawsuit is that one of the biggest gripes Republicans have with the ACA is the employer mandate. The president used executive action to delay the mandate, which caused the controversy.
The subsidy lawsuits all shared the same basic challenge: that subsidies are illegal unless a state has set up it’s own health insurance marketplace. This claim was based on the specific wording of the law, which says subsidies are for health coverage obtained on an “Exchange established by the State under section 1311.” The law does not mention subsidies for health insurance if a state doesn’t set up a marketplace since, at the time it was written, it was assumed that most states would establish their own exchanges (although the law clearly also mentions what happens when the state defers it’s marketplace to the Federal government or sets up a partnership exchange). The IRS later clarified the subsidy rule stating that it applied to the federal marketplaces as well. Lawsuits also charge that the IRS did not have the authority to do this, and that the law should be interpreted as written. This was also addressed in King V Burwell as the Supreme Court affirmed the IRS ruling.