Justice Department Tells Court Obamacare Unconstitutional, Could Strike Down Entire Law
KEN KLUKOWSKI26
Mar 2019
Washington, DC7502

WASHINGTON, DC – The Trump-Barr Department of Justice (DOJ) informed a federal appeals court on Monday that it agrees with Texas and the other states suing over Obamacare that President Donald Trump’s repealing of the individual mandate renders the entire law unconstitutional, and therefore should be struck down in its entirety.

This all turns on the legal doctrine of severability. Much of the time when a statute is unconstitutional it is actually only partially unconstitutional. Typically a court will strike down that part of the law, but sever it from the rest of the statute and uphold the remainder.

Pundits who have never studied or litigated severability will surely show up on television now posing as experts, and criticizing DOJ’s position. But writing as a former law school faculty member who authored the largest academic work on severability doctrine ever published, permit me to describe the argument and why it should be taken seriously.

President Barack Obama signed the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in 2010 when a Democrat-controlled Congress passed that statute without a single Republican vote in either the House or Senate. Various plaintiffs immediately filed suit. In the biggest lawsuit, a majority of states in the nation – along with the National Federation of Independent Businesses (NFIB) and several private individuals – filed suit in Florida, arguing that the ACA was unconstitutional.

The plaintiffs raised multiple constitutional issues. At the heart of the legal challenge is the doctrine of enumerated powers: The Constitution gives the federal government only limited powers, and so every provision of every law Congress passes must be authorized by one of the provisions of Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution.

One constitutional objection to the ACA was that Section 1501 of the ACA – which is the individual mandate that requires Americans to buy health insurance – is unconstitutional, because Congress’s constitutional power to regulate interstate commerce in Article I, Section 8, Clause 3 of the Constitution does not include the power to order human beings to buy something, thereby entering into the commercial realm where the government can regulate them.

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Then came a historic surprise. Chief Justice John Roberts agreed that the individual mandate was not authorized by the Constitution’s Commerce Clause. However, he concluded that even though only a couple paragraphs in 980 pages of legal briefs discussing Congress’s power to tax, and even though only a couple minutes was spent on that issue during six hours of oral argument, that the individual mandate was authorized by the Constitution’s Tax Clause, and was therefore constitutional.

Roberts admitted that the individual mandate looked like a commercial regulatory law, and thus would normally need to be authorized by the Commerce Clause. However, he wrote that there were several factors that, taken together, permitted courts to view the mandate as a tax. These included that (1) it was codified in 26 U.S.C. § 5000A, which is part of the Tax Code; (2) it was enforced by the IRS, (3) proof of complying with the mandate is reported along with a person’s annual Form 1040 tax return, and (4) failure to comply results in a tax penalty that goes to the U.S. Treasury along with normal tax money.

Years later, President Trump signed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. Part of that historic tax reform repealed 26 U.S.C. § 5000A in the Tax Code, which is the operative part of the individual mandate.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton immediately sued, joined by 19 other states. Their argument is that the factors Roberts relied upon to uphold the individual mandate as a tax no longer existed. As such, the only relevant constitutional provision is the Commerce Clause, and a five-Justice majority already held in NFIB that the individual mandate would be unconstitutional if it relied upon Congress’s commercial regulatory power.

Texas went on to argue that the individual mandate still cannot be severed from the rest of the ACA, and therefore the entire statute must be struck down.


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The Obama administration admitted during the big Supreme Court case that the individual mandate was the essential “linchpin” to keep the entire ACA from imploding due to unsustainable costs. It is a compelling argument against severability.

The Supreme Court has held that courts must look to congressional intent when determining whether part of a statute can be severed to salvage the rest. Courts must ascertain the original “legislative bargain,” and then ask two questions: First, does the remaining statute “function in a manner consistent with the intent of Congress.” And if so, second, would Congress “have enacted them standing alone and without the unconstitutional portion.”

If the answer to either question is “no,” then the unconstitutional provision is nonseverable, and the court must strike down the entire statute.


The case is now on appeal before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. The head of DOJ’s Civil Division, Assistant Attorney General Jody Hunt, filed a notice with the Fifth Circuit on Monday informing the court that the Trump administration agrees with Texas that the individual mandate is unconstitutional and nonseverable, and thus that the entire ACA is unconstitutional. DOJ therefore will be filing briefs in support of the legal challenge. (Liberal states have intervened as the defendants in the case.)

What so many talking heads derided as an absurd lawsuit suddenly looks like a pretty serious case after all.

President Trump has had a major impact on the Fifth Circuit through his judicial appointments. Proven constitutional conservatives like Judges Don Willett, Jim Ho, Andy Oldham, and Kyle Duncan now sit on that court, under the mentoring of the fearless originalist Edith Jones and the libertarian-leaning Jerry Smith.

Regardless of how the Fifth Circuit rules in the case, the fact remains that the fifth vote to win at the Supreme Court is still Roberts. Many believe that his reasoning was such a stretch to save Obamacare the first time that he would find another rationale to do so now.

While that might be true, it does not need to be true. It is possible that the chief justice could play it straight from his 2012 reasoning, in which case the ACA should be struck down without the tax authorization.

It is also possible that President Trump will fill another Supreme Court vacancy before this case is decided by the Supreme Court – a decision that could come in 2020 but is more likely to come in 2021 – in which case Roberts’ vote might not even be necessary.

Suddenly, Obamacare is back in the legal crosshairs. If it falls under this legal challenge, President Trump would have a clean canvas on which to design fundamental market-based reforms to provide healthcare security and freedom for millions of Americans.

The case is Texas v. United States, No. 19-10011 in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

Ken Klukowski is senior legal editor for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter @kenklukowski.

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/...own-entire-law/