Tina Simpson, JD, MSPH
Principal
Yesterday, the Supreme Court released its decision in California v. Texas, upholding the Affordable Care Act (ACA) against a challenge by Republican-controlled “Red States” and the Trump Administration. This constitutes the third time that the Supreme Court has upheld the constitutionality of the landmark legislation.
While this decision was (cautiously, anxiously) anticipated, it comes as a welcome relief to many. The ACA currently provides health insurance (whether through the individual marketplace or through Medicaid expansion) to over 31 million Americans.
A Closer Look at a Scathing Opinion
In its 7-2 decision (Justices Alito and Gorsuch dissenting), the Court maintained existing precedent as it relates the Justiciability Doctrine and held that the Plaintiffs lacked standing. Standing—as explained by Justice Breyer in the Court’s opinion—requires that “a plaintiff must allege personal injury, fairly traceable to the defendant’s allegedly unlawful conduct and likely to be redressed by the requested relief.” (For a brush up on the precedent of Standing and the Justiciability Doctrine, check out our previous post following the hearings last year: Texas v. California and the Doctrine of Judicial Exhaustion).
The Plaintiffs—represented by a consortium of Republican-controlled states, but also two individuals who objected to the individual mandate—could not meet that standard of entry as they could not demonstrate any actual injury. Emphasizing the importance of such definitional terms (and also the tortured legal reasoning of the plaintiffs) Justice Breyer, summarized with liberal use of the inverted commas, writing “No plaintiff has shown such an injury ‘fairly traceable’ to the ‘allegedly unlawful conduct’ challenged here.” Or, more to the point, following the zero-ing out of the tax penalty by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 (the very action that gave rise to this litigation), “there is no possible Government action that is causally connected to the plaintiff’s injury.”
There is nothing more to be said, but Justice Breyer continues (with the patience and the thinly veiled snark of a law professor) to break down the deficits of the Plaintiffs’ arguments for a further 18 pages. It makes for satisfying and informative reading.
However, as Justice Breyer is quick to note (well, maybe not so quick – coming as it does on page 12 of 19), this is not merely an academic or “technical” point. There is a fundamental Constitutional principle to defend here: that of the legitimacy of representative governance. The Court is the final arbitrator of the laws of the land. In our model of limited, representative government, that is an awesome authority – which, if not applied prudently can amount to either supremacy over the representative branches, or (more likely) to the judicial branch being shown up as a toothless paper tiger (see Marbury v. Madison). Either way, it would upset the delicate (if tangled and imperfect) balance of power of this long-running experiment in representative government.
So, while the Justiciability Doctrine may be commonly lampooned as the “get out of jail free” card for the Court,[i] It is an important, foundational principle. To find otherwise “would threaten to grant unelected judges a general authority to conduct oversight of decisions of the elected branched of Government.” And I think that we can all agree that that kind of governance by fiat is not very American.
[i] Meaning, it is used as a justification to dodge hearing cases that are too political (the political question doctrine), too new or where the facts and consequences are too indeterminate (“ripeness” doctrine), or too old and stale (“mootness” doctrine).