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Supreme Court Upholds the Affordable Care Act As Constitutional: Summary - On Thursday, June 17, the U.S. Supreme Court dismissed a challenge to the Affordable Care Act for failure to show that the individual and state plaintiffs had standing to attack the law’s requirement that individuals obtain minimum essential coverage (MEC), otherwise known as the individual mandate. The Court concluded that the plaintiffs failed to show a past or future injury traceable to the federal government’s conduct enforcing the MEC provision they attack as unconstitutional. The Court reversed and vacated the Fifth Circuit’s judgment in respect to standing and remanded the case back to the lower court with instructions to dismiss.
The case was decided by a 7-2 majority vote, with Justices Alito and Gorsuch dissenting. The Court did not reach the merits of the issue – i.e., whether the “individual mandate” to purchase insurance is unconstitutional with a $0 penalty; however, the fact that neither the states nor individuals have standing to sue should settle this issue. While there may be challenges to the ACA in the future, there appear to be no serious constitutional challenges in the pipeline that would overturn the ACA in its entirety. Therefore, it continues to be business as usual with respect to the ACA, including the employer mandate and form 1094-C/1095-C reporting. Read More
