“It is time to mercifully disconnect the legal life support for ACA. Its contrived justification – the taxation power of the United States – can no longer sustain it,” AAPS and CCHF state in their Amicus Brief filed today with the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in support of an affirmation by Judge O’Connor’s ruling that “the entire law is invalid.”
The brief continues:
The decision below was entirely correct in ending ACA. Lacking a severability clause, ACA should not be rewritten by the judiciary in a misguided effort to try to save it.
AAPS has members who practice medicine within the jurisdiction of this Court, who are affected by continued enforcement of ACA and thus have direct and vital interests in the issues presented here.
Citizens’ Council for Health Freedom (CCHF) exists to protect health care choices, individualized patient care, and medical and genetic privacy rights nationwide.
The precedent to be set by this Court in this case impacts both patient and physician freedom, and the rights of citizens to a genuinely confidential patient physician relationship. Amicus CCHF thereby has direct and vital interests in the issues presented in this appeal.
Additional arguments by AAPS and CCHF include:
- Appellants themselves lack standing required to bring this appeal. Neither the State Intervenors nor the United States House of Representatives (the “House”) may properly stand in the shoes of the United States to pursue this appeal.
- The Tenth Amendment [protecting State autonomy] is the elephant in the room standing against the constitutionality of ACA, and the Tenth Amendment should be the starting point for analysis of it.
- A healthy dose of the free market, which would result from striking down ACA, is just what the legal doctor should order.
- The Unconstitutional Individual Mandate in ACA Is Not Severable from the Remainder of ACA.
- Severance Would Operate as an Improper Judicial Line Item Veto in Violation of the Presentment Clause.
The brief concludes: “There was no error of law or abuse of discretion in the district court’s decision to invalidate ACA, and this appeal should be dismissed for lack of jurisdiction or the ruling below should be affirmed. “
Read Full Brief:
https://aapsonline.org/judicial/aaps-amicus-texas-v-us-5-8-2019.pdf
