AG Ferguson statement on seeking Supreme Court review of Affordable Care Act (ACA)

SEATTLE — Attorney General Bob Ferguson offers the following statement on asking the United States Supreme Court to review the lower court’s decision in a challenge to the Affordable Care Act (ACA):

Without the Affordable Care Act, hundreds of thousands of hardworking Washingtonians will lose access to affordable health care coverage, and many more will face devastating cost increases. That’s why Washington and a multistate coalition have stepped up to defend the Affordable Care Act, after the Trump Administration callously refused to defend the law. We’re asking the Supreme Court to protect Washingtonians’ access to affordable health care — and we expect to win.” 

A 20-state coalition including Washington is seeking review of a decision in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which held that the individual mandate is unconstitutional, but declined to further rule on the validity of the ACA’s remaining provisions. The court instead sent the case back to the Northern District of Texas to determine which provisions of the 900-page law are still valid. 

Republican Attorneys General, led by Texas, filed the challenge to the ACA in February 2018 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas. 

In a brief filed in June 2018, the Trump Administration declared that it would not defend the ACA against the challenge by the Republican Attorneys General. In a letter to Congressional leaders, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions said the decision not to defend the ACA was made “with the approval of the President of the United States.”
Because of the Administration’s decision, Ferguson and a multistate coalition filed a motion to intervene in the case on the side of the federal government to defend the ACA. This is not one of Ferguson’s 54 lawsuits against the Trump Administration. 

More than 800,000 Washingtonians depend on the ACA for their health care. Since the ACA went into effect, Washington’s uninsured rate dropped by 60 percent, and now fewer than 6 percent of Washingtonians are without health insurance. 

If the ACA is eliminated, Washingtonians would lose an average of $295 per month in federal premium subsidies, and more than 600,000 people enrolled in Apple Health as part of the ACA’s Medicaid expansion would lose coverage. Insurers would once again be allowed to discriminate based on medical history, and patients would again be subject to annual and lifetime limits to their health benefits

Ferguson has defended the ACA on multiple occasions, including defending against a previous challenge to the law by the U.S. House of Representatives, and filing a lawsuit to ensure critical funding would continue. Ferguson also filed two “friend of the court” briefs in cases challenging tax credits for low- and middle-income people buying health insurance (Halbig v. Burwell and King v. Burwell).