Texas Judge Declares Obamacare Unconstitutional

The lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Obamacare, arguing that President Trump’s tax overhaul passed by Congress changed the individual mandate tax penalty to $0, which rendered the entire healthcare act as unconstitutional…

Staff Report

Last night, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton applauded a U.S. District Court decision declaring the federal government’s Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare as unconstitutional.

In February, Paxton and Wisconsin Attorney General, Brad Schimel led a 20-state coalition lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Obamacare, arguing that President Trump’s tax overhaul passed by Congress changed the individual mandate tax penalty to $0, which rendered the entire healthcare act as unconstitutional.

When the Supreme Court upheld Obamacare in 2012, a majority of the justices agreed that the provision forcing individuals to purchase health insurance was unconstitutional without the tax penalty.

The commerce power, Chief Justice John Roberts explained, gives Congress the power to regulate commerce, and not to compel commerce, as Obamacare does.

Furthermore, Congress and the Obama administration made it clear that the individual mandate was an essential component of the law, without which the remainder of the law would not have been enacted.

In its current unlawful form, Obamacare imposes rising costs and transfers an enormous amount of regulatory power to the federal government.

Texas and 38 other states, where the federal government administers health exchanges, health insurance premiums rose an average of 105 percent from 2013 to 2017.

Citizens around the country, roughly 70 percent of counties, are forced into a noncompetitive situation, having only one or two health insurer options.

“Today’s ruling  halts an unconstitutional exertion of federal power over the American healthcare system,” Attorney General Paxton said. “Our lawsuit seeks to effectively repeal Obamacare, which will give President Trump and Congress the opportunity to replace the failed social experiment with a plan that ensures Texans and all Americans will again have greater choice about what health coverage they need and who will be their doctor.”

Last June, the U.S. Department of Justice conceded in court filings that Obamacare’s individual mandate is unconstitutional and asked a federal judge to strike it down along with other central provisions of Obamacare before the tax law takes effect on January 1, 2019.

Texas and Wisconsin were joined in the lawsuit against Obamacare by the attorneys general of Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah and West Virginia, along with the governors of Maine and Mississippi.