The Supreme Court on Monday said it will take up a Republican challenge to Obamacare, in a move that boosts Democrats who want to highlight the lawsuit’s threat to health care coverage during campaign season.
The justices said they would hear the case, likely later this year, after turning down an earlier request from Democrats to fast-track a ruling by June. The decision increases pressure on President Donald Trump over health care, a top concern for voters and an issue that has benefited Democrats since the GOP's failed effort to repeal Obamacare during Trump's first year in office.
However, it’s unlikely the justices will rule before the election on the lawsuit, which could wipe out the Affordable Care Act’s insurance protections and coverage for millions of people. The court is expected to hear the case during its next term starting in October, but the court did not yet say when it will hear oral arguments.
The suit, brought by more than a dozen red states, emerged as a threat to Obamacare in December, when a panel of federal appeals court judges found the law unconstitutional. Instead of ruling on the entire law, the appellate panel sent the challenge back to a federal judge in Texas who previously invalidated the entire law, jolting Democrats who feared the move would extend the legal fight over Obamacare for years.
Democratic state attorneys general and the Democratic-led House of Representatives, who are defending the law in court, quickly asked the Supreme Court to intercept the case. The Trump administration, which supports the Texas-led lawsuit, and the states challenging Obamacare urged the justices against intervening right away.
California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, who's leading the Democrats' Obamacare defense, hailed the court's decision to take the case.
"As Texas and the Trump Administration fight to disrupt our healthcare system and the coverage that millions of people rely upon, we look forward to making our case in defense of the ACA. American lives depend upon it,' he said in a statement.
Although the justices last month rejected Democrats’ request to expedite a ruling on the case by June, at the time they left open the possibility they would take the case on a regular schedule.
Though the court doesn’t disclose how justices vote on whether to review a case, legal observers believed the bench’s four liberal members likely supported Democrats’ petition. To accept a case, at least four justices must agree.
Still, it's rare that justices review a case before it's received full consideration in lower courts — and the decision to do so underscores the monumental stakes of a case could upend coverage for millions of people and create chaos across the health care system.
Democrats were able to leverage the lawsuit's threat to coverage for preexisting medical conditions to retake the House of Representatives in the 2018 midterms. Democratic leaders, eager to run the same playbook this year, have routinely attacked Trump over his support for the lawsuit and the lack of a viable Obamacare replacement.
Trump has been sensitive to attacks on his health care record, and in January he exploded at HHS Secretary Alex Azar over polling that showed Democrats leading on the issue. Trump often has repeated the false claimthat he’s safeguarding insurance protections for preexisting conditions, even as he backs a lawsuit that could overturn them.
The court’s looming review could put more pressure on Republicans to articulate how they would prevent massive disruption should the lawsuit ultimately succeed. Azar, however, has said the administration doesn't need to release an alternative plan unless the Supreme Court rules against Obamacare.
This legal challenge brought by a coalition of red states in early 2018, after Congress eliminated Obamacare's tax penalty for not having health insurance while leaving the rest of the individual mandate in law. The states argued that made the rest of Obamacare unconstitutional, since the Supreme Court previously upheld the mandate on the basis of Congress' taxing power.
The lawsuit was initially viewed as a long shot, but it gained traction among Republican-appointed judges.
Many legal observers expect Chief Justice John Roberts will again join with the court’s liberal wing to uphold Obamacare. He wrote opinions affirming the law in the two previous major Obamacare challenges that went to the Supreme Court.
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