On December 19, 2019, in a split decision in Texas v. United States, the Fifth Circuit held that the Individual Mandate (“Mandate”) of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“ACA”) became unconstitutional when Congress zeroed out the penalty, but vacated the district court’s decision that the ACA itself was unconstitutional without the Mandate. The Fifth Circuit remanded the case to the lower court for further analysis of the Mandate’s severability from the ACA.  For previous coverage of the district court’s decision, in which it found the ACA unconstitutional because the zero-penalty Mandate was inseverable from the rest of the statute, please click here.

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