Reuters opines:Originally Posted by Ziggy Stardust
The justices were hearing a scheduled 80 minutes of arguments by teleconference in an appeal by a coalition of Democratic-governed states including California and New York and the Democratic-led House of Representatives to preserve Obamacare.
The case represents the latest Republican legal attack on the 2010 law...The Supreme Court in 2012 and 2015 fended off previous Republican challenges to it.
The Supreme Court has a 6-3 conservative majority after the Republican-led Senate last month confirmed Trump’s third appointee, Amy Coney Barrett. Most legal experts think the justices will stop short of a seismic ruling striking down Obamacare.
A group of states led by Texas, later joined by Trump’s administration, sued in 2018 in Texas to strike down the law.
“We believe there are nine justices who connect the dots and see how important this is,” said California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, a Democrat who is leading the coalition of 20 states defending Obamacare.
“We think there’s a very strong chance that Americans will continue to have good healthcare coverage,” Becerra added.
Texas-based US District Court Judge Reed O’Connor in 2018 ruled that Obamacare was unconstitutional as currently structured in light of a Republican-backed change made by Congress a year earlier.
The New Orleans-based 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals last year partially upheld that ruling, saying the law’s “individual mandate,” which required people to obtain insurance or pay a financial penalty, afoul of the Constitution. But the 5th Circuit stopped short of striking down the law. The Democratic-led states and the House then appealed to the Supreme Court.
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