The Eleventh Circuit appeals court, based in Atlanta, ruled Friday that the law’s individual mandate, which requires everyone to own health insurance in America’s mostly private system or pay a penalty, exceeded Congress’s powers.
But the court ruled that the remainder of the health care law, which extended coverage to an extra 32 million people and was a long-held dream of Democrats, was within the bounds of the Constitution.
About 50 million Americans lack basic health insurance. As a result, hospitals and taxpayers are forced to pay about US$43 billion a year to cover the costs of those who are treated but cannot pay.
The ruling increased the likelihood that the US Supreme Court will be called upon to rule on the health care law’s constitutionality, possibly as soon as next year, in the heat of a presidential election campaign.
Republicans strongly oppose the law, which they have dubbed “Obamacare,” as an infringement on individual liberty, and have sworn to repeal it.
By a 2-1 margin, the Eleventh Circuit affirmed a ruling by a lower Florida court that the individual mandate was unconstitutional, in a case brought by 26 state governors and attorneys general, most of them Republican.
But the judges overturned another part of the Florida court’s ruling that the entire health care law, passed in 2010, was unconstitutional.
