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In a significant shift, the Justice Department now says that it backs a full invalidation of the Affordable Care Act, the signature Obama-era health law.

It presented its position in a legal filing Monday with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit in New Orleans, where an appeal is pending in a case challenging the measure’s constitutionality. A federal judge in Texas https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/federal-judge-in-texas-rules-obama-health-care-law-unconstitutional/2018/12/14/9e8bb5a2-fd63-11e8-862a-b6a6f3ce8199_story.html?utm_term=.8d80b0d3a68a (ruled in December) that the law’s individual mandate "can no longer be sustained as an exercise of Congress’s tax power” and further found that the remaining portions of the law are void. He based his judgment on https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/the-health-202/2017/12/21/the-health-202-a-eulogy-for-the-individual-mandate/5a3a94d430fb0469e883fd24/?utm_term=.6011aa208c73 (changes to the nation’s tax laws) made by congressional Republicans in 2017.

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Legal experts said the filing was more significant in demonstrating the administration’s anti-ACA zeal than in altering the course of ongoing litigation.

Timothy S. Jost, an emeritus professor at the Washington and Lee University School of Law, called the Justice Department’s new position “crazy” and “legally untenable.”

“I can’t believe that even the 5th Circuit would take that position,” he said in an interview, suggesting that arguably the nation’s most conservative appeals court would still be reluctant to accept the reasoning backed by the administration. "It would be like invalidating the Interstate Highway System, causing chaos on an unimaginable scale. It’s conceivable that the entire Medicare payment system would collapse.”

The filing reflected “a strictly political decision, not a legal decision,” Jost said. “Trump has wanted to get rid of the ACA, and I guess he sees an opportunity here. He thinks maybe he can get the 5th Circuit to go along and, ultimately, maybe the Supreme Court."
 
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