The Justice Department is supporting a federal judge’s ruling that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is unconstitutional in a case that could eventually be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court. In the meantime, all ACA coverage and reporting obligations for employers remain in place.
“The Department of Justice has determined that the district court’s comprehensive opinion came to the correct conclusion and will support it on appeal,” said Kerri Kupec, spokesperson for the Justice Department.
On Dec. 14, in Texas v. United States, district court judge Reed O’Connor ruled that because Congress eliminated the penalty on individuals without ACA-compliant health coverage effective Jan. 1, 2019, the ACA’s individual mandate requiring people to have health insurance “can no longer be sustained as an exercise of Congress’s tax power.” O’Connor, who sits in the Northern District of Texas, then struck down the ACA in full, concluding that the individual mandate is so connected to the law that Congress would not have passed the ACA without it.
For now, employers should remember that the ACA is still the law and the Justice Department’s stance does not change their present compliance obligations. Employers with 50 or more employees, still have to offer health care coverage to at least 95 percent of full-time employees and properly report offers of coverage, so they are not penalized.
