The Trump administration said the latest legal challenge to the ACA can wait.
In a response to a request from the law's defenders that the case be reviewed by the Supreme Court this term, the administration said there's no "present, real-world emergency" that requires expedited review, The New York Times reports. Republican states, also plaintiffs in the case, agreed.
"Far from being urgently needed, this Court’s review thus would be premature," the Trump administration's response read, submitted by Noel Francisco, the solicitor general counsel of record for the Justice Department. The response was requested by the Supreme Court after 20 Democratic-led states and the District of Columbia filed a petition for the Court to take up the case.
At issue in the case — Texas v. United States — is whether the ACA's individual mandate was rendered unconstitutional when the penalty associated with it was zeroed out by the 2017 tax law. Two courts have ruled the mandate unconstitutional, so now the challenge centers on whether that decision invalidates the entire law or if only certain provisions should be invalidated. Most recently, a federal appeals court sent the case back to the lower court to grapple with this issue.
The defenders of the law wanted the Supreme Court to take up the case because the drawn out legal process creates problematic uncertainty for all stakeholders in the healthcare system.
The New York Times notes that the Supreme Court normally waits for lower courts to finish their full review before taking up cases.
Read more here.
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