Joe Biden’s administration would have limited options to prevent the U.S. Supreme Court from ruling on the Affordable Care Act because the original lawsuit was brought by a group of Republican state attorneys general, CNN reports.
"The Biden administration's options are pretty limited," when it comes to the case, according to Nicholas Bagley, a professor of administrative law at the University of Michigan Law School.
He added that Biden "could drop the Justice Department's support for the lawsuit, but that won't make the case go away because the red state plaintiffs will still push it forward."
A spokesperson for Biden said that he will make an announcement about his plans for the case on Tuesday.
"President-elect Biden has laid out a comprehensive plan to build on the Affordable Care Act, lower health care costs, and expand coverage — something that's vitally important right now in the middle of a pandemic — and once in office, Biden's going to work to deliver on that plan," said spokesman Mike Gwin.
CNN notes that the Senate has three options to address the individual mandate, the issue at the center of the case: either eliminating it altogether, set the penalty so low that it’s effectively nothing, or make clear that the mandate can be separated from the rest of the law without invalidating the entire piece of legislation.
"Those are all three things that could be done," said Case Western Reserve University professor Jonathan Adler, who has been critical of the Affordable Care Act in the past. "All of them would require legislative cooperation, which would require the Senate to go along, which obviously, the Senate may or may not be willing to go along with."
Theodore Bunker ✉
Theodore Bunker, a Newsmax writer, has more than a decade covering news, media, and politics.
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