WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court has turned back a major challenge to the Affordable Care Act, allowing the 2010 law to survive even though a controversial provision requiring all Americans to buy health insurance no longer has a monetary penalty associated with it.

In a 7-2 ruling, the court held that the states that sued over the law did not have standing to do so.

After upholding the law in 2012 and again in 2015, the court was faced with the latest Republican challenge to former President Barack Obama's signature domestic policy achievement, this one stemming from a move by the GOP-controlled Congress to zero-out a tax penalty for most Americans who fail to purchase health insurance.

The penalty was initially upheld under Congress' constitutional power to levy a tax, but the Republican attorney general in Texas, Ken Paxton, argued the penalty stopped being a tax once President Donald Trump signed a law in 2017 cutting it to zero.

Texas, joined by 17 other states, didn't stop there: It told the court that the rest of Obamacare also had to be thrown out because its other provisions – such as protections for people with preexisting conditions and the prohibition on lifetime benefit caps – rested on the requirement that all Americans obtain health coverage in some form.

But the nation's highest court didn't get those questions in its opinion this week, USA Today reported.

"We do not reach these questions of the Act’s validity, however, for Texas and the other plaintiffs in this suit lack the standing necessary to raise them," Associate Justice Stephen Breyer wrote for the majority.

Breyer was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justices Clarence Thomas, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. Associate Justices Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch wrote a dissenting opinion.

"Today’s decision is the third installment in our epic Affordable Care Act trilogy, and it follows the same pattern as installments one and two," Alito wrote in his dissent. "In all three episodes, with the Affordable Care Act facing a serious threat, the Court has pulled off an improbable rescue."

The case is among the most consequential the nation's highest court has considered this term, and it follows more than a decade of bitter partisan dispute over a law that expanded coverage to some 23 million Americans.

The fate of Obamacare was top of mind for senators during the confirmation of Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett last fall. Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee urged her to recuse herself from the Texas case because, as a law professor at Notre Dame, she had openly criticized the court's earlier rulings upholding the law.

Barrett, seated in October to replace the late Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, refused to commit to recusal but asserted she wasn't "on a mission to destroy the Affordable Care Act."

California and other blue states stepped in to defend the law after Trump's Justice Department declined to do so. They argued that the zeroed-out penalty at the heart of the case couldn't be unconstitutional because it didn't require anyone to do anything. And if it was so central to the rest of the health care law, they added, then Congress would have repealed the entire law instead of just one piece of it.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta hailed Thursday's ruling in California v. Texas as a victory for the health and well-being of every single American.

Story Date: June 18, 2021