"Unprecedented: The Constitutional Challenge to Obamacare" by Josh Blackman
The Roberts Court (2010-2016). Seated, from left to right: Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia, Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., and Justices Anthony M. Kennedy and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Standing, from left to right: Sonia Sotomayor, Stephen G. Breyer, Samuel A. Alito, and Elena Kagan.
President Obama signs the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010
President Obama signs the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010
President Obama's signature on the Affordable Care Act
The National Federation of Independent Business
Chief Justice Roberts voted to uphold the Affordable Care Act by reading the individual mandate as a tax. Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan joined that portion of his opinion. Justices Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas, and Alito would have found the entire ACA unconstitutional.
Chief Justice Roberts, and Justices Breyer and Kagan uphold the Medicaid expansion in part. Justice Ginsburg and Sotomayor would have upheld the expansion in its entirety. Justices Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas, and Alito found the expansion unconstitutional.
The Tax Cut and Jobs Act of 2017 reduced the ACA's penalty to $0.
The Tax Cut and Jobs Act of 2017 reduced the ACA's penalty to $0.
President Trump signs the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017
A Brief History of Implied Powers
In 2010, Congress passed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA). The ACA, also known as Obamacare, regulated the private health insurance marketplace. Through the so-called individual mandate, the ACA required most Americans to maintain health insurance. Additionally, the law required states to make more low-income people eligible for Medicaid, a state-run insurance pro- gram. States that refused to expand their Medicaid programs would lose all the funding they were receiving for their existing Medicaid program, which was billions of dollars.
The attorneys general of twenty-six states and the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) challenged the ACA’s constitutionality. Randy Barnett eventually became a member of NFIB’s legal team.
In 2012, a sharply divided Supreme Court upheld most of the ACA.
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