Court strikes Obamacare insurance mandate

In another strike against the Affordable Care Act, a federal appeals court found the requirement that all Americans have health insurance is unconstitutional. In a 2-1 ruling, a three-judge panel from the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans on Wednesday said the individual mandate became unconstitutional when Congress cut the tax on people without insurance to zero in 2017.

What does this mean for Obamacare? The court did not rule on the law’s overall constitutionality, so it remains in effect for now. The decision sends the case back to U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor of Texas to decide how much of the ACA can stand separate from the individual mandate. A group of Democratic state attorneys general defending the law vowed to appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Dig deeper: Read Lynde Langdon’s report on O’Connor’s original ruling last December.