'Embarrassingly Bad,' 'Unmoored': Legal Scholars Bash Texas Judge's ACA Takedown
"A ruling this consequential had better be based on rock-solid legal argument. Instead, the opinion by Judge Reed O'Connor is an exercise of raw judicial power," two legal scholars said.
December 17, 2018 at 11:54 AM
5 minute read
A decision late Friday declaring the Affordable Care Act unlawful triggered a furious weekend debate about the validity of the ruling and its fate before an appeals court and ultimately before the U.S. Supreme Court.
In the 55-page decision in Texas v. United States, U.S. District Judge Reed O'Connor in Fort Worth, Texas, agreed with 20 states challenging the law that congressional action last year to eliminate the penalty imposed by the individual mandate in the act made it unconstitutional. In the more controversial part of O'Connor's decision, he said that the demise of the mandate rendered the entire law invalid, because it could not be severed from the mandate.
Democratic attorneys general who intervened in the case immediately vowed they would appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, putting the law on the path to review in the next year or so by the U.S. Supreme Court, which upheld the law in 2012. Trump on Monday declared in a tweet: “A confirming Supreme Court Decision will lead to GREAT HealthCare results for Americans!”
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