The U.S. Supreme Court will not undertake an expedited review of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), meaning that a case about the health law’s constitutionality will not appear before the court, if at all, until October 2020, and a decision on it will occur after the presidential election.
MHA and 32 other state hospital associations on January 15 filed an amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court, asking it to resolve the legal challenges to the ACA that are now being fought in federal courts. The Supreme Court’s one-line decision announcing it would not take up the case seems to put the issue of whether the ACA’s individual mandate is legal and, if it’s not, whether the whole ACA is therefore invalid back before a U.S. District Court, with the possibility that the Supreme Court could still intervene in the fall.