The ACA Survives Its Most Recent Challenge

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) can be compared to a cat with nine lives. In a highly anticipated ruling issued on June 17, 2021, the U.S. Supreme Court held, in a 7-2 decision, Texas v. California, that the plaintiffs lacked legal standing to challenge the constitutionality of the ACA because they could not show "an injury 'fairly traceable' to the 'allegedly unlawful conduct' challenged here."

Texas v. California was the third major challenge to the ACA since its enactment in 2010.

In this case, more than a dozen states as well as two individual plaintiffs challenged whether the individual health-insurance mandate, which the Supreme Court upheld in National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius on the basis of Congress's taxing powers, was rendered unconstitutional when the tax penalty associated with the failure to maintain individual health-insurance coverage was reduced to zero dollars under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. In deciding the