O’Connor decided that once Congress repealed the tax penalty that enforced a mandate that most Americans get health insurance, the whole law became invalid. The judge’s ruling, she said, flouts settled legal doctrine and places key acts of Congress in reverse order. The Supreme Court upheld the law in 2012 and again in 2015, and it was modified by Congress in 2017. In 2017, Congress passed a law that revoked the tax penalty, making the individual mandate essentially toothless. In his ruling, O’Connor wrote that by revising the law in 2017, Congress “sawed off the last leg it stood on.

Source: Washington Post December 15, 2018 20:39 UTC