National Women's Law Center Responds to Supreme Court Announcement on Affordable Care Act

(Washington, D.C.) Earlier today, the Supreme Court announced it would hear arguments on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), groundbreaking legislation that has already improved women’s access to health care and, once fully implemented in 2014, will vastly expand health insurance coverage, slow the growth of health care costs and insurance premiums, and end an array of insurance practices that have prevented millions of individuals from obtaining health insurance and health care.

Although the National Women’s Law Center regards the ACA’s constitutionality as a matter of settled law founded firmly in decades of legal precedent, opponents of the ACA have sought to overturn it, leading to today’s announcement by the Supreme Court. Three of the four courts of appeals that considered legal challenges to the ACA have rejected the arguments of those seeking to overturn the law.

The following is a statement by Marcia D. Greenberger, Co-President of the National Women’s Law Center:

“By passing the Affordable Care Act, Congress sought to remove discriminatory barriers to women’s participation in the health insurance market. It is vitally important to recognize what this landmark legislation means to women across the country. Under the ACA, sex discrimination in health care programs receiving federal funding is illegal, nursing mothers have new rights at work, adult children under 26 can get health care through their parents’ insurance plans, and insurers may not drop people’s coverage if they get sick, including women if they get pregnant, or deny children coverage because of pre-existing conditions. By 2014, a host of new guarantees and protections will come into force, further expanding access to health insurance.

“The Supreme Court’s own precedents make clear that just as Congress has the authority to pass civil rights laws, Congress acted well within its constitutional authority in passing the Affordable Care Act. As the D.C. Circuit Court noted just last week, the Commerce Clause of the Constitution gives Congress the power to pass laws regulating the marketplace, including the insurance industry. Congress’s power extends to the individual responsibility provision, which requires virtually all individuals to obtain health insurance by 2014, with subsidies available for millions of low- and moderate-income people.

“Today, health care costs of the uninsured are shouldered by society as a whole, at a cost of billions of dollars each year, but those challenging the individual responsibility provision argue that Congress nevertheless cannot require individuals to participate in the insurance market. Every one of us needs health care at some point in our lives, and a person’s choice to avoid paying for insurance is actually an economic decision about how and when to pay for the costs of health care that person will eventually need. Congress has the authority to regulate this economic choice, just as it can pass laws requiring employers to consider women job applicants even if they would rather not and restaurants to serve people of color even if they would rather not.

“It was not widely expected that the Supreme Court would agree to consider the constitutionality of the ACA’s Medicaid expansion, which would provide coverage to 8.2 million more women by 2014, but we are confident that the Court will uphold the federal government’s long-standing authority to expand and improve this crucial program, which has withstood challenges to its constitutionality since its establishment in 1965.

“If the Supreme Court decides in favor of decades of established precedent and upholds the health reform law, the ACA’s guarantees and protections will ensure that being a woman is no longer considered a pre-existing condition. The Center has confidence that the Court will respect legal precedent and recognize that the Constitution permits Congress to take action in the face of a national health care crisis and remove the barriers that have prevented women and their families from obtaining affordable health care coverage.”

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For more information, visit: http://www.nwlc.org/resource/health-care-law-litigation