The Supreme Court on Thursday turned back its third chance to upend the Affordable Care Act, rejecting a lawsuit filed by a group of Republican state attorneys general claiming that a change made by Congress in 2017 had rendered the entire law unconstitutional.
By a vote of 7-2, however, the justices did not even reach the merits of the case, ruling instead that the suing states and the individual plaintiffs, two self-employed Texans, lacked “standing” to bring the case to court.
“We proceed no further than standing,” wrote Justice Stephen Breyer for the majority. “Neither the individual nor the state plaintiffs have shown that the injury they will suffer or have suffered is ‘fairly traceable’ to the ‘allegedly unlawful conduct’ of which they complain.”
The two dissenters in the case, Justices Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch, disagreed. “The States have clearly shown that they suffer concrete and particularized financial injuries that are traceable to conduct of the Federal Government,” Alito wrote. “The ACA saddles them with expensive and burdensome obligations, and those obligations are enforced by the Federal Government. That is sufficient to establish standing.”
The ruling represented a win not only for backers of the health law in general, but also for Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra. As California attorney general, Becerra led the Democratic states defending the ACA after the Trump administration sided with the Republican states’ suit.