Very proud to file this brief w/@dorfonlaw & @CrialKilru in the ACA case. There've been dozens of briefs on severability & ramifications filed so far. But this is, I think, the only amicus brief yet devoted to the antecedent question ... /1
supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/19/1…
supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/19/1…
... that ought to resolve the case in the most straightforward way. The Texas challenge, which the SG is inexplicably supporting, is crucially premised on the idea that the 2017 Congress *imposed* an unconstitutional mandate to purchase qualifying health insurance. /2
Of course the GOP Congress & @realDonaldTrump did no such thing. Indeed, just last week, in the very course of confirming that DOJ would defend the CTA5 judgment, the President said that “we got rid of the individual mandate” so that “you don’t have [to] buy health insurance." /3
Just so. Indeed, it's what *every* member of Congress, and the public, rightly understood the tax bill to have done. Yet Trump's DOJ apparently will argue that he *imposed* a mandate. For the reasons we explain in our brief, that can't be right. And that's the end of the case. /4
