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1 1 (October 27, 2020)

handle is hein.crs/govdcjo0001 and id is 1 raw text is: Research Servi California v. Texas: The Fate of the Affordable Care Act October 27, 2020 On November 10, 2020, the Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral argument in California . Texas (consolidated with the related case Texas v. California), a constitutional challenge to the Affordable Care Act's (ACA's) individual mandate. The suit also seeks to invalidate the ACA's many other provisions, which cover a range of issues such as the regulation of private health insurance, changes to public health care programs like Medicaid and Medicare, funding for preventive health care programs, drug regulation, and nutritional content display at restaurants. This Sidebar provides background on the ACA's individual mandate, including relevant prior litigation, followed by a discussion of the California v. Texas case, including the parties' arguments in the case. It concludes with some select considerations for Congress. The ACA's Individual Mandate Enacted in 2010, one of the ACA's central goals was to increase the number and share of Americans who are insured. In its original form, the ACA's major components included sweeping changes to federal regulation of private health insurance, established income-based subsidies to facilitate the purchase of health insurance, and substantially increased the scope of Medicaid coverage. Additionally, in a requirement commonly referred to as the individual mandate, the law compelled certain individuals to maintain minimum levels of health insurance and, as originally enacted, imposed financial penalties enforced as a tax on those who failed to comply with the requirement. The Supreme Court has once before considered the individual mandate's constitutionality. In 2012, the Court addressed this issue in its landmark case, National Federation of lndependent Business (fEI) K. Sebehius. In NFIB, several states and private litigants argued that the individual mandate exceeded Congress's legislative authority. They further claimed the rest of the ACA was not severable from the individual mandate and would thereby have to be invalidated in its entirety if the individual mandate was held unconstitutional. Chief Justice Roberts, writing for himself, was joined by Justices Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas, and Alito, writing separately, in ruling that neither Congress's authority to regulate interstate commerce nor its derivative authority to enact necessary laws to effectuate its enumerated powers gave Congress authority to enact the individual mandate. These Justices collectively explained that while the Commerce Clause allows Congress to regulate existing commercial activity, it does not bestow Congress with the authority to compel individuals to participate in commerce. A different group of five Justices, Congressional Research Service https://crsreports.congress. gov LSB10547 CRS Legai Sidebar Prepared for Members and Commit tees of Congress ----------------------------------------------------------------- ----------

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