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WASHINGTON
Health insurance

More legal challenges ahead for Obamacare

Brad Heath
USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — The legal attacks on President Obama's health care law aren't over. But their chances of crippling or killing it just got a lot worse.

Chief Justice John Roberts

The Supreme Court turned back the latest of those attacks on Thursday, the second time in less than three years that the justices upheld key features of Obama's signature domestic policy. In doing so, even some lawyers backing those attacks said Chief Justice John Roberts sent a strong signal that those looking to dismantle the health law should probably look elsewhere.

"At this point, the Chief Justice has said we're done here," said Josh Blackman, a conservative legal blogger and professor at South Texas College of Law. "The battle over Obamacare isn't over, but today the Chief Justice signaled it won't go through the courts."

Obama echoed that point Thursday morning. The Affordable Care Act, he said, "is here to stay."

Plenty of challenges remain, though few are broad enough to cripple the health law even if they succeed. Republican lawmakers have sued over delays in requiring employers to provide insurance. Some Indiana schools say it's unconstitutional to force them to provide coverage. Another suit says Congress violated a little-known section of the Constitution about which chamber must introduce tax bills first. Others challenge the requirement that insurance cover contraception.

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Supporters of the Affordable Care Act gather at the Supreme Court on June 25, 2015.

Strictly speaking, Thursday's decision interpreted only four words of the 906-page health law; it has no biding effect at all on the rest of those lawsuits. But it will not be lost on lower-court judges that this is the second time the high court's conservative chief justice has commanded a majority to uphold the law, and this time by a wider margin, said Timothy Sandefur, a lawyer for the Pacific Legal Foundation.

"Judges pay attention to that," he said.

Still, Sanderfur said, he expects courts to be hearing legal challenges for years. Among them is a case of his own that's pending before a federal appeals court in Washington alleging that Congress violated the Constitution's Origination Clause by kicking off a tax bill in the Senate instead of the House. "Obamacare is unconstitutional in so many ways that it violates provisions of the Constitution that have never been violated before," he said.

Whatever that court decides, he said he expects someone will appeal it to the Supreme Court.

"The court's not going to make the Affordable Care Act go away, but this won't make Affordable Care Act litigation go away either," said Jonathan Adler, a law professor at Case Western Reserve University who helped develop the legal attack the court rejected Thursday. "You can't enact a statute of this size, scope and complexity without a lot of litigation."

Other lawyers said they would press ahead.

"Today's decision construed four words in the Affordable Care Act," said Jim Hamilton, a lawyer for 39 Indiana school districts suing over the law's requirement that they provide health insurance. It "cannot be read more broadly in terms of limiting future challenges to the law."

Contributing; Gregory Korte, Richard Wolf, Maureen Groppe

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