President Joe Biden‘s administration has formally withdrawn federal support for an a challenge to the Affordable Care Act (ACA), better know as Obamacare, filed during Donald Trump‘s presidential term. Biden’s Department of Justice formally submitted their withdrawal from the challenge on Wednesday.
“Following the change in administration, the Department of Justice has reconsidered the government’s position in these cases,” Deputy Solicitor General Edwin Kneedler wrote. The federal government, he explained, “no longer adheres to the conclusions in the previously filed brief of the federal respondents.”
The original challenge to the Affordable Care Act came from a coalition of states led by Texas which argued that the act was no longer constitutional after the then-Republican majority Congress cancelled the ACA’s tax penalty for the uninsured. While most legal experts believe the basis for the challenge is legally questionable, lower courts upheld the challenge.
A majority of the Supreme Court already appear unlikely to overturn the ACA, but the Biden DOJ’s letter affirms that the current administration is attempting to distance itself as far as possible from the one that came before them.
