Texas v. California

Questions presented

SCOTUS records, cert granted 2 Mar 2020

1. Congress passed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act ("ACA"), Pub. L. No. 111-148, 124 Stat. 119 (Mar. 23, 2010), with the express goal of achieving near- universal health-insurance coverage. To achieve that goal, Congress found it was "essential" to require healthy Americans to ensure that they have what Congress considered minimum essential coverage. In 2012, this Court held that "[t]he Federal Government does not have the power to order people to buy health insurance." Nat'l Fed'n of Indep. Bus. v. Sebelius ("NFIB"), 567 U.S. 519, 575 (2012) (op. of Roberts, C.J.). The Court upheld the minimum-essential-coverage requirement, however, because it was "fairly possible" to construe the mandate as a tax. Id. at 574. In 2017, Congress eliminated that alternative construction by zeroing out any penalty. That legislative act rendered the individual mandate unconstitutional, as the court below correctly held. The Court should deny the petitions in Nos. 19-840 and 19-841. But if it grants them, it should grant this conditional cross-petition, as well, which presents the following questions:
2. Whether the unconstitutional individual mandate to purchase minimum essential coverage is severable from the remainder of the ACA.
3. Whether the district court properly declared the ACA invalid in its entirety and unenforceable any-where.

Opinion summary

Etalia.ai summary of the majority opinion

The case involved a challenge to the Affordable Care Act (ACA) after Congress reduced the penalty for not having health insurance to zero in 2017. Texas and other states argued that this change rendered the individual mandate unconstitutional, which should invalidate the entire ACA. The Supreme Court did not address these substantive issues because it ruled on procedural grounds. In a 7-2 decision, the Court held that neither Texas nor any of its co-plaintiffs had standing to sue since they could not demonstrate an injury directly traceable to enforcing or implementing any part of the ACA now that there was no penalty for non-compliance with the mandate.