SCOTUS accepts another challenge to the health-care law; subsidies at issue
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The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear another challenge to the Obama administration’s health-care law, this time over tax subsidies said to be essential to the law.
The court granted cert this afternoon in King v. Burwell, according to SCOTUSblog, the New York Times and the Associated Press.
“This is a challenge to the most consequential regulation promulgated under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act,” the cert petition (PDF) asserts.
At issue is the reach of Section 36B of the Internal Revenue Code, which authorizes tax subsidies for low-income people participating in insurance exchanges “established by the state.” The Internal Revenue Service had interpreted Section 36B broadly to allow tax credits for those who buy insurance through federal as well as state insurance exchanges, meaning low-income residents of all 50 states are eligible.
According to a brief (PDF) by the Obama administration, 16 states and Washington, D.C., have established their own insurance exchanges while 34 states opted out, leaving the federal exchange available.
The Richmond, Virginia-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with the IRS interpretation in July, ruling in King v. Burwell that tax credits are available in the states that have opted out of state-run insurance exchanges, leaving only the federal exchange available.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit issued a contrary ruling in Halbig v. Burwell, a decision vacated by the full circuit when it granted a rehearing in September.
By granting cert before the case played out in the lower courts, the Supreme Court ensured the case will be heard this term, SCOTUSblog says. If the court “decides to limit the subsidies to the state-run exchanges,” the blog says, “it is widely understood that that outcome would crash the ACA’s carefully balanced economic arrangements.”
The Times speculates that the four votes needed to grant cert could have come from the conservative justices in the minority when the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Affordable Care Act under Congress’ taxing power in 2012.
“Once again,” the Times says, “it seems, the fate of the law will rest with Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.”
