{"id":54,"date":"2018-12-17T16:51:21","date_gmt":"2018-12-17T20:51:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/benefitslaw\/?p=54"},"modified":"2018-12-17T16:52:01","modified_gmt":"2018-12-17T20:52:01","slug":"federal-judge-aca-unconstitutional-after-individual-mandate-was-struck-down-in-the-tax-cuts-and-jobs-act","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/benefitslaw\/2018\/12\/17\/federal-judge-aca-unconstitutional-after-individual-mandate-was-struck-down-in-the-tax-cuts-and-jobs-act\/","title":{"rendered":"Federal Judge: ACA Unconstitutional After Individual Mandate Was Struck Down in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On December 14, 2018, in\u00a0<i>Texas v. United States<\/i>, a federal judge in the Northern District of Texas ruled the entirety of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) to be unconstitutional due to the elimination of the individual mandate in last year\u2019s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (Tax Act). The court ruled that the individual mandate was such an essential provision of the ACA that rewriting the ACA without it is beyond the power of a federal court and that the individual mandate is inseverable from the ACA\u2019s remaining provisions.<\/p>\n<p>The court\u2019s decision sent shockwaves through the legal community and news outlets\u2014particularly as the ACA\u2019s annual enrollment period for 2019 was set to end on December 15, 2018. However, while the decision of the court should not be understated, it will be appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit (and almost certainly after that to the U.S. Supreme Court) and the ACA remains in place during the appeals process.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.duanemorris.com\/alerts\/federal_judge_finds_aca_unconstitutional_individual_mandate_struck_down_tax_act_1218.html\">Visit the Duane Morris LLP website to read the full <em>Alert<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On December 14, 2018, in\u00a0Texas v. United States, a federal judge in the Northern District of Texas ruled the entirety of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) to be unconstitutional due to the elimination of the individual mandate in last year\u2019s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (Tax Act). The court ruled that the &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/benefitslaw\/2018\/12\/17\/federal-judge-aca-unconstitutional-after-individual-mandate-was-struck-down-in-the-tax-cuts-and-jobs-act\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Federal Judge: ACA Unconstitutional After Individual Mandate Was Struck Down in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[79,84,80,17,81,78,83],"ppma_author":[94],"class_list":["post-54","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-employee-benefits","tag-aca","tag-individual-mandate","tag-obamacare","tag-supreme-court","tag-tax-cuts-and-jobs-act","tag-timothy-b-collins","tag-unconstitutional"],"authors":[{"term_id":94,"user_id":6,"is_guest":0,"slug":"duanemorris3","display_name":"Duane Morris","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/843ff6e7a8fe5fc92109b47a45f34b6cf0ea499e6e788db23456c838b0ae6747?s=96&d=blank&r=g","0":null,"1":"","2":"","3":"","4":"","5":"","6":"","7":"","8":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/benefitslaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/benefitslaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/benefitslaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/benefitslaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/benefitslaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/benefitslaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/benefitslaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/benefitslaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/benefitslaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/benefitslaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=54"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}