State of Texas v. USA

Case: 19-10011 Document: 00515265674 Page: 1 Date Filed: 01/09/2020

REVISED January 9, 2020

IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE FIFTH CIRCUIT United States Court of Appeals

Fifth Circuit

FILED

December 18, 2019

No. 19-10011

Lyle W. Cayce

Clerk

STATE OF TEXAS; STATE OF ALABAMA; STATE OF ARIZONA; STATE

OF FLORIDA; STATE OF GEORGIA; STATE OF INDIANA; STATE OF

KANSAS; STATE OF LOUISIANA; STATE OF MISSISSIPPI, by and

through Governor Phil Bryant; STATE OF MISSOURI; STATE OF

NEBRASKA; STATE OF NORTH DAKOTA; STATE OF SOUTH

CAROLINA; STATE OF SOUTH DAKOTA; STATE OF TENNESSEE;

STATE OF UTAH; STATE OF WEST VIRGINIA; STATE OF ARKANSAS;

NEILL HURLEY; JOHN NANTZ,

Plaintiffs – Appellees,

v.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA; UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF

HEALTH; HUMAN SERVICES; ALEX AZAR, II, SECRETARY, U.S.

DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES; UNITED STATES

DEPARTMENT OF INTERNAL REVENUE; CHARLES P. RETTIG, in his

Official Capacity as Commissioner of Internal Revenue,

Defendants – Appellants,

STATE OF CALIFORNIA; STATE OF CONNECTICUT; DISTRICT OF

COLUMBIA; STATE OF DELAWARE; STATE OF HAWAII; STATE OF

ILLINOIS; STATE OF KENTUCKY, ex rel. Andy Beshear, Governor; STATE

OF MASSACHUSETTS; STATE OF NEW JERSEY; STATE OF NEW YORK;

STATE OF NORTH CAROLINA; STATE OF OREGON; STATE OF RHODE

ISLAND; STATE OF VERMONT; STATE OF VIRGINIA; STATE OF

WASHINGTON; STATE OF MINNESOTA,

Intervenor-Defendants – Appellants.

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Appeals from the United States District Court

for the Northern District of Texas

Before KING, ELROD, and ENGELHARDT, Circuit Judges.

JENNIFER WALKER ELROD, Circuit Judge:

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (the Act or ACA) is a

monumental piece of healthcare legislation that regulates a huge swath of the

nation’s economy and affects the healthcare decisions of millions of Americans.

The law has been a focal point of our country’s political debate since it was

passed nearly a decade ago. Some say that the Act is a much-needed solution

to the problem of increasing healthcare costs and lack of healthcare

availability. Many of the amici in this case, for example, argue that the law

has extensively benefitted everyone from children to senior citizens to local

governments to small businesses. Others say that the Act is a costly exercise

in burdensome governmental regulation that deprives people of economic

liberty. Amici of this perspective argue, for example, that the Act “has deprived

patients nationwide of a competitive market for affordable high-deductible

health insurance,” leaving “patients with no alternative to . . . skyrocketing

premiums.” Association of American Physicians & Surgeons Amicus Br. at 15.

None of these policy issues are before the court. And for good reason—

the courts are not institutionally equipped to address them. These issues are

far better left to the other two branches of government. The questions before

the court are far narrower: questions of law, not of policy. Those questions are:

First, is there a live case or controversy before us even though the federal

defendants have conceded many aspects of the dispute; and, relatedly, do the

intervenor-defendant states and the U.S. House of Representatives have

standing to appeal? Second, do the plaintiffs have standing? Third, if they do,

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is the individual mandate unconstitutional? Fourth, if it is, how much of the

rest of the Act is inseverable from the individual mandate?

We answer those questions as follows: First, there is a live case or

controversy because the intervenor-defendant states have standing to appeal

and, even if they did not, there remains a live case or controversy between the

plaintiffs and the federal defendants. Second, the plaintiffs have Article III

standing to bring this challenge to the ACA; the individual mandate injures

both the individual plaintiffs, by requiring them to buy insurance that they do

not want, and the state plaintiffs, by increasing their costs of complying with

the reporting requirements that accompany the individual mandate. Third,

the individual mandate is unconstitutional because it can no longer be read as

a tax, and there is no other constitutional provision that justifies this exercise

of congressional power. Fourth, on the severability question, we remand to the

district court to provide additional analysis of the provisions of the ACA as they

currently exist.

I.

On March 23, 2010, President Barack Obama signed the ACA into law.

See Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Pub. L. No. 111-148, 124 Stat.

119 (2010). The Act sought to “increase the number of Americans covered by

health insurance and decrease the cost of health care” through several key

reforms. See Nat’l Fed’n of Indep. Bus. v. Sebelius (NFIB), 567 U.S. 519, 538

(2012).

Some of those reforms implemented new consumer protections, aiming

primarily to protect people with preexisting conditions. For example, the law

prohibits insurers from refusing to cover preexisting conditions. 42 U.S.C.

§ 300gg-3. The “guaranteed-issue requirement” forbids insurers from turning

customers away because of their health. See 42 U.S.C. §§ 300gg, 300gg-1. The

“community-rating requirement” keeps insurers from charging people more

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because of their preexisting health issues. 42 U.S.C. § 300gg-4. 1 The law also

requires insurers to provide coverage for certain types of care, including

women’s and children’s preventative care. 42 U.S.C. § 300gg-13(a)(3)–(4). 2

Other reforms sought to lower the cost of health insurance by using both

policy “carrots” and “sticks.” 3 On the stick side, the individual mandate—

which plaintiffs challenge in the instant case—requires individuals to

“maintain [health insurance] coverage.” 26 U.S.C. § 5000A(a). If individuals

do not maintain this coverage, they must make a payment to the IRS called a

“shared responsibility payment.” 4 Id.; see also King v. Burwell, 135 S. Ct. 2480,

2486 (2015).

1 The ACA features a few other consumer-protection reforms of note. For example,

the Act requires insurance companies to allow young adults to stay on their parents’ health

insurance plans until they turn 26; prohibits insurers from imposing caps on the value of

benefits provided; and mandates that the insurance plans cover at least ten “essential health

benefits,” including emergency services, prescription drugs, and maternity and newborn care.

See 42 U.S.C. §§ 300gg-14 (young adults), 300gg-11 (restriction on benefit caps), 18022

(essential health benefits). The ACA also requires employers with at least fifty full-time

employees to pay the federal government a penalty if they fail to provide their employees

with ACA-compliant coverage. 26 U.S.C. § 4980H.

2 The women’s preventative care provision was at issue in a trio of recent Supreme

Court cases. See Zubik v. Burwell, 136 S. Ct. 1557 (2016); Wheaton College v. Burwell, 573

U.S. 958 (2014); Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., 573 U.S. 682 (2014); see also California

v. U.S. Dep’t of Health & Human Servs., No. 19-15072, 2019 WL 5382250 (9th Cir. Oct. 22,

2019); Pennsylvania v. President United States, 930 F.3d 543 (3d Cir. 2019), as amended (July

18, 2019); DeOtte v. Azar, 393 F. Supp. 3d 490, 495 (N.D. Tex. 2019).

3 Some opponents of the ACA assert that the goal was not to lower health insurance

costs, but that the entire law was enacted as part of a fraud on the American people, designed

to ultimately lead to a federal, single-payer healthcare system. In a hearing before the House

Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, for example, Representative Kerry

Bentivolio suggested that Jonathan Gruber, who assisted in crafting the legislation, had

“help[ed] the administration deceive the American people on this healthcare act or [told] the

truth in [a] video . . . about how [the Act] was a fraud upon the American people.” Examining

Obamacare Transparency Failures: Hearing Before the H. Comm. on Oversight and

Government Reform, 113th Cong. 83 (2014) (statement of Rep. Kerry Bentivolio).

4 The Act exempts several groups of people from the shared responsibility payment.

Specifically, the Act provides that “[n]o penalty shall be imposed” on those “who cannot afford

[insurance] coverage,” on “[t]axpayers with income below [the] filing threshold,” on

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The individual mandate was designed to lower insurance premiums by

broadening the insurance pool. See 42 U.S.C. § 18091(2)(J) (“By significantly

increasing . . . the size of purchasing pools, . . . the [individual mandate] will

significantly . . . lower health insurance premiums.”). When the young and

healthy must buy insurance, the insurance pool faces less risk, which, at least

in theory, leads to lower premiums for everyone. See 42 U.S.C. § 18091(2)(I)

(positing that the individual mandate will “broaden the health insurance risk

pool to include healthy individuals, which will lower health insurance

premiums”). The individual mandate thus serves as a counterweight to the

ACA’s protections for preexisting conditions, which push riskier, costlier

individuals into the insurance pool. Under the protections for consumers with

preexisting conditions, if there were no individual mandate, there would

arguably be an “adverse selection” problem: “many individuals would,” in

theory, “wait to purchase health insurance until they needed care.” Id. 5

The Act also sought to lower insurance costs for some consumers through

policy “carrots,” providing tax credits to offset the cost of insurance to those

with incomes under 400 percent of the federal poverty line. See 26 U.S.C.

§ 36B; 42 U.S.C. §§ 18081, 18082. The Act also created government-run,

taxpayer-funded health insurance marketplaces—known as “Exchanges”—

which allow customers “to compare and purchase insurance plans.” King, 135

“[m]embers of Indian tribes,” on those who had only “short coverage gaps,” or on anyone who,

in the Secretary of Health and Human Services’ determination, has “suffered a hardship.”

26 U.S.C. § 5000A(e).

5 Opponents of the ACA, however, argue that the Act goes too far in limiting

individuals’ freedom to choose healthcare coverage. For example, at a House committee

hearing, Representative Darrell Issa argued that one of the “false claims” that the Obama

administration made in passing the Act was that “[i]f you like your doctor, you will be able to

keep your doctor, period. . . . [And i]f you like your [insurance] plan, you can keep your plan.”

Examining Obamacare Transparency Failures: Hearing Before the H. Comm. on Oversight

and Government Reform, 113th Cong. 2 (2014) (statement of Rep. Darrell Issa, Chairman, H.

Comm. on Oversight and Government Reform).

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S. Ct. at 2485; see also 42 U.S.C. § 18031. Opponents of the law argue that the

law has led to unintended subsidies to keep plans afloat and insurance

companies in the black. Texas points in its brief, for example, to a

Congressional Budget Office study estimating that federal outlays for health

insurance subsidies and related spending will rise by about 60 percent over the

next ten years, from $58 billion in 2018 to $91 billion by 2028. CBO, The

Budget and Economic Outlook: 2018 to 2028 at 51 (April 2018), available at

https://tinyurl.com/CBOBudgetEconOutlook-2018-2028; State Plaintiffs’ Br. at

13–14.

The ACA also enlarged the class of people eligible for Medicaid to include

childless adults with incomes up to 133 percent of the federal poverty line. 42

U.S.C. §§ 1396a(a)(10)(A)(i)(VII), 1396a(e)(14)(I)(i); NFIB, 567 U.S. at 541–42.

The ACA originally required each state to expand its Medicaid program or risk

losing “all of its federal Medicaid funds.” NFIB, 567 U.S. at 542. In NFIB,

however, the Supreme Court held that this exceeded Congress’ powers under

the Spending Clause. Id. at 585 (plurality opinion). But the Court allowed

those states that wanted to accept Medicaid expansion funds to do so. See id.

at 585–86 (plurality opinion); id. at 645–46 (Ginsburg, J., concurring in part,

concurring in the judgment in part, and dissenting in part). As a result, the

states that have not participated in the expansion now subsidize, through their

general tax dollars, the states that have participated in expansion.

Since the Act was passed, its opponents have attempted to attack it both

through congressional amendment and through litigation. Between 2010 and

2016, Congress considered several bills to repeal, defund, delay, or amend the

ACA. See Intervenor-Defendant States’ Br. at 10. Except for a few modest

changes, these efforts were closely fought but ultimately failed. Intervenor-

Defendant States’ Br. at 10–11. In 2017, the shift in presidential

administrations reinvigorated opposition to the law, but many of these later

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legislative efforts failed as well. In March 2017, House leaders pulled a bill

that would have repealed many of the ACA’s essential provisions. In July

2017, the Senate voted on three separate bills that similarly would have

repealed major provisions of the Act, but each vote failed. 6 Finally, in

September 2017, several Senators introduced another bill that would have

repealed some of the ACA’s most significant provisions, but Senate leaders

ultimately chose not to bring it to the floor for a vote. Intervenor-Defendant

States’ Br. at 11.

The ACA’s opponents also took their cause to the courts in a series of

lawsuits, some of which reached the Supreme Court. Particularly relevant

here, the Court, in NFIB, upheld the law’s individual mandate. 567 U.S. at

574. Through fractured voting and shifting majorities—explained in more

detail in Part V of this opinion—the Court decided that the ACA’s individual

mandate could be read as a tax on an individual’s decision not to purchase

insurance, which was a constitutional exercise of Congress’ taxing powers

under Article I of the U.S. Constitution. Id.; U.S. Const. art. I, § 8, cl. 1. The

Court favored this tax interpretation to save the provision from

unconstitutionality. Reading the provision as a standalone command to

purchase insurance would have rendered it unconstitutional. This reading

could not have been justified under the Commerce Clause because it would

have done more than “regulate commerce . . . among the several states.” U.S.

Const. art. I, § 8, cl. 3. It would have compelled individuals to enter commerce

in the first place. 7 NFIB, 567 U.S. at 557–58. The Court also held that the

One of these bills failed by a razor-thin vote of fifty-one against, forty-nine in favor.

6

See 163 Cong. Rec. S4415 (daily ed. July 27, 2017).

Chief Justice Roberts cautioned that concluding otherwise would empower the

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government to compel Americans into all kinds of behavior that the government thinks is

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provision could not be justified under the Constitution’s Necessary and Proper

Clause. Id. at 561 (Roberts, C.J.); id. at 654–55 (Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas, and

Alito, JJ., dissenting).

In December 2017, the ACA’s opponents achieved some legislative

success. As part of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, Congress set the “shared

responsibility payment” amount—the amount a person must pay for failing to

comply with the individual mandate—to the “lesser” of “zero percent” of an

individual’s household income or “$0,” effective January 2019. Pub. L. No. 115-

97, § 11081, 131 Stat. 2054, 2092 (2017); see also 26 U.S.C. § 5000A(c). The

individual mandate is still “on the books” of the U.S. Code and still consists of

the three fundamental components it always featured. Subsection (a)

prescribes that certain individuals “shall . . . ensure” that they and their

dependents are “covered under minimum essential coverage.” 26 U.S.C.

§ 5000A(a). Subsection (b) “impose[s] . . . a penalty” called a “[s]hared

responsibility payment” on those who fail to ensure they have minimum

essential coverage. 26 U.S.C. § 5000A(b). Subsection (c) sets the amount of

that payment. All Congress did in 2017 was change the amount in subsection

(c) to zero dollars. 26 U.S.C. § 5000A(c).

Two months after the shared responsibility payment was set at zero

dollars, the plaintiffs here—two private citizens 8 and eighteen states 9—filed

this lawsuit against several federal defendants: the United States of America,

beneficial for them, including, for example, compelling them to purchase broccoli. See NFIB,

567 U.S. at 558 (Roberts, C.J.).

8 Namely, Neill Hurley and John Nantz.

9 Namely, Texas, Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana,

Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee,

Utah, West Virginia, and Arkansas. Wisconsin, which was originally a plaintiff state, sought

and was granted dismissal from the appeal.

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the Department of Health and Human Services and its Secretary, Alex Azar,

as well as the Internal Revenue Service and its Acting Commissioner, David J.

Kautter. The plaintiffs argued that the individual mandate was no longer

constitutional because: (1) NFIB rested the individual mandate’s

constitutionality exclusively on reading the provision as a tax; and (2) the 2017

amendment undermined any ability to characterize the individual mandate as

a tax because the provision no longer generates revenue, a requirement for a

tax. The plaintiffs argued further that, because the individual mandate was

essential to and inseverable from the rest of the ACA, the entire ACA must be

enjoined. On this theory, the plaintiffs sought declaratory relief that the

individual mandate is unconstitutional and the rest of the ACA is inseverable.

The plaintiffs also sought an injunction prohibiting the federal defendants

from enforcing any provision of the ACA or its regulations.

The federal defendants agreed with the plaintiffs that once the shared

responsibility payment was reduced to zero dollars, the individual mandate

was no longer constitutional. They also agreed that the individual mandate

could not be severed from the ACA’s guaranteed-issue and community-rating

requirements. Unlike the plaintiffs, however, the federal defendants

contended in the district court that those three provisions could be severed

from the rest of the Act. Driven by the federal defendants’ decision not to fully

defend against the lawsuit, sixteen states 10 and the District of Columbia

intervened to defend the ACA.

The district court agreed with the plaintiffs’ arguments on the merits.

Specifically, the court held that: (1) the individual plaintiffs had standing

10 Namely, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Kentucky,

Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont,

Virginia, Washington, and Minnesota.

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because the individual mandate compelled them to purchase insurance;

(2) setting the shared responsibility payment to zero rendered the individual

mandate unconstitutional; and (3) the unconstitutional provision could not be

severed from any other part of the ACA. The district court granted the

plaintiffs’ claim for declaratory relief. Specifically, the district court’s order

“declares the Individual Mandate, 26 U.S.C. § 5000A(a),

UNCONSTITUTIONAL,” and the order further declares that “the remaining

provisions of the ACA, Pub L. 111-148, are INSEVERABLE and therefore

INVALID.” The district court, however, denied the plaintiffs’ application for a

preliminary injunction. The district court entered partial final judgment 11 as

to the grant of summary judgment for declaratory relief, but stayed judgment

pending appeal. This appeal followed.

On appeal, the U.S. House of Representatives intervened to join the

intervenor-defendant states in defending the ACA. 12 Also on appeal, the

federal defendants changed their litigation position. After contending in the

district court that only a few provisions of the ACA were inseverable from the

individual mandate, the federal defendants contend in their opening brief for

the first time that all of the ACA is inseverable. See Fed. Defendants’ Br. at

43–49. Moreover, the federal defendants contend for the first time on appeal

11 The final judgment is only partial because it addresses only Count One of the

plaintiffs’ amended complaint. Count One requests a declaratory judgment that the

individual mandate exceeds Congress’ constitutional powers. The district court has not yet

ruled on the other counts in the amended complaint. In Count Two, the plaintiffs request a

declaratory judgment that the ACA violates the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment.

In Count Three, the plaintiffs request a declaratory judgment that the ACA violates the

Tenth Amendment. In Count Four, the plaintiffs request a declaratory judgment that agency

rules promulgated pursuant to the ACA are unlawful. In Count Five, the plaintiffs request

an injunction prohibiting federal officials from “implementing, regulating, or otherwise

enforcing any part of the ACA.”

12 In addition to the U.S. House, four other states intervened on appeal to join the

original group that defended the Act in the district court: Colorado, Iowa, Michigan, and

Nevada.

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that—even though the entire ACA is inseverable—the court should not enjoin

the enforcement of the entire ACA. The federal defendants now argue that the

district court’s judgment should be affirmed “except insofar as it purports to

extend relief to ACA provisions that are unnecessary to remedy plaintiffs’

injuries.” 13 Fed. Defendants’ Br. at 49. They also now argue that the district

court’s judgment “cannot be understood as extending beyond the plaintiff

states to invalidate the ACA in the intervenor states.” Fed. Defendants’ Supp.

Br. at 10. Simply put, the federal defendants have shifted their position on

appeal more than once.

II.

We review a district court’s grant of summary judgment de novo. Time

Warner Cable, Inc. v. Hudson, 667 F.3d 630, 638 (5th Cir. 2012). Summary

judgment is appropriate when “the movant shows that there is no genuine

dispute as to any material fact and the movant is entitled to judgment as a

matter of law.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(a); see also Dialysis Newco, Inc. v. Cmty.

Health Sys. Grp. Health Plan, 938 F.3d 246, 250 (5th Cir. 2019). A dispute

about a material fact is genuine if “the evidence is such that a reasonable jury

could return a verdict for the non-moving party.” Amerisure Ins. v. Navigators

Ins., 611 F.3d 299, 304 (5th Cir. 2010) (quoting Gates v. Tex. Dep’t of Protective

& Regulatory Servs., 537 F.3d 404, 417 (5th Cir. 2008)). When ruling on a

motion for summary judgment, the court views all inferences drawn from the

13The federal defendants do not specify which precise provisions, in their view, injure

the plaintiffs and which do not.

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factual record “in the light most favorable to the non-moving parties below.”

Trent v. Wade, 776 F.3d 368, 373 n.1 (5th Cir. 2015).

III.

We first must consider whether there is a live “[c]ase” or “[c]ontroversy”

before us on appeal, as Article III of the U.S. Constitution requires. U.S. Const.

art. III, § 1. A case or controversy does not exist unless the person asking the

court for a decision—in this case, asking us to decide whether the district

court’s judgment was correct—has standing, which requires a showing of

“injury, causation, and redressability.” Sierra Club v. Babbitt, 995 F.2d 571,

574 (5th Cir. 1993). When “standing to appeal is at issue, appellants must

demonstrate some injury from the judgment below.” Id. at 575 (emphasis

omitted).

We conclude, as all parties agree, that there is a case or controversy

before us on appeal. Two groups of parties appealed from the district court’s

judgment: the federal defendants, and the intervenor-defendant states. 14

There is a case or controversy before us because both of these groups have their

own independent standing to appeal. 15

The federal defendants have standing to appeal. The instant case is on

all fours with the Supreme Court’s decision in United States v. Windsor, 570

U.S. 744 (2013). In that case, the executive branch of the federal government

declined to defend a federal statute that did not allow the surviving spouse of

14 The U.S. House of Representatives, also a party in this case, intervened in our court

after the intervenor-defendant states and the federal government had filed notices of appeal.

15Even if only one of these parties had standing to appeal, that would be enough to

sustain the court’s jurisdiction. An intervenor needs standing only “in the absence of the

party on whose side the intervenor intervened.” Sierra Club, 995 F.2d at 574 (alteration

omitted) (quoting Diamond v. Charles, 476 U.S. 54, 68 (1986)); see also Vill. of Arlington

Heights v. Metro. Hous. Dev. Corp., 429 U.S. 252, 264 & n.9 (1977) (exercising jurisdiction

because “at least one” plaintiff had standing to sue).

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a same-sex couple to receive a spousal tax deduction. Id. at 749–53. The

district court ruled that the statute was unconstitutional and ordered the

executive branch to issue a tax refund to the surviving spouse. Id. at 754–55.

The executive branch agreed with the district court’s legal conclusion, but it

appealed the judgment and continued to enforce the statute by withholding the

tax refund until a final judicial resolution. Id. at 757–58.

The Supreme Court ruled that “the United States retain[ed] a stake

sufficient to support Article III jurisdiction.” Id. at 757. That stake was the

tax refund, which the federal government refused to pay. This threat of

payment of money from the Treasury constituted “a real and immediate

economic injury” to the federal government, which was sufficient for standing

purposes. Id. at 757–58 (quoting Hein v. Freedom From Religion Found., Inc.,

551 U.S. 587, 599 (2007) (plurality opinion)). As the Court explained, “the

refusal of the Executive to provide the relief sought suffices to preserve a

justiciable dispute as required by Article III.” Id. at 759; see also Food Mktg.

Inst. v. Argus Leader Media, 139 S. Ct. 2356, 2362 (2019) (concluding that there

was a justiciable controversy because the government “represented

unequivocally” that it would not voluntarily moot the controversy absent a

final judicial order, and “[t]hat is enough to satisfy Article III”); INS v. Chadha,

462 U.S. 919, 939 (1983) (holding that there was “adequate Art. III

adverseness” because the executive branch determined that a federal statute

was unconstitutional and refused to defend it but simultaneously continued to

abide by it).

The instant case is similar. Though the plaintiffs and the federal

defendants are in almost complete agreement on the merits of the case, the

government continues to enforce the entire Act. The federal government has

made no indication that it will begin dismantling any part of the ACA in the

absence of a final court order. Just as in Windsor, then, effectuating the

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district court’s order would require the federal government to take actions that

it would not take “but for the court’s order.” Windsor, 570 U.S. at 758. And

just as in Windsor, the federal defendants stand to suffer financially if the

district court’s judgment is affirmed. 16 As just one example, the district court’s

judgment declares the Act’s Medicare reimbursement schedules unlawful,

which, if given effect, would require Medicare to reimburse healthcare

providers at higher rates. See, e.g., 42 U.S.C. § 1395ww(b)(3)(B)(xi)–(xii).

Therefore, just as in Windsor, an appellate decision here will “have real

meaning.” 570 U.S. at 758 (quoting Chadha, 462 U.S. at 939). 17

The intervenor-defendant states also have standing to appeal. While a

party’s mere “status as an intervenor below . . . does not confer standing,”

Diamond v. Charles, 476 U.S. 54, 68 (1986), intervenors may appeal if they can

demonstrate injury from the district court’s judgment. Sierra Club, 995 F.2d

at 574; see also Va. House of Delegates v. Bethune-Hill, 139 S. Ct. 1945, 1951

(2019); Cooper v. Tex. Alcoholic Beverage Comm’n, 820 F.3d 730, 737 (5th Cir.

2016). The intervenor-defendant states have made this showing because the

district court’s judgment, if ultimately given effect, would: (1) strip these states

of funding that they receive under the ACA; and (2) threaten to hamstring

these states in possible future litigation because of the district court

judgment’s potentially preclusive effect. 18

16The dissenting Justices in Windsor objected to the Windsor majority’s approach to

standing. Justice Scalia, for example, said that this approach to standing “would have been

unrecognizable to those who wrote and ratified our national charter.” Windsor, 570 U.S. at

779 (Scalia, J., dissenting). We are bound by the Windsor majority opinion.

17Just as in Windsor, moreover, principles of prudential standing weigh in favor of

exercising jurisdiction despite the government’s alignment with the plaintiffs. Just like the

intervenors in Windsor, the intervenor-defendant states and the U.S. House both put on a

“sharp adversarial presentation of the issues.” Id. at 761.

18 At first glance, it may not be entirely clear how a mere partial summary judgment

on the issuance of a declaratory judgment would aggrieve anyone. But at oral argument, all

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First, the intervenor-defendant states receive significant funding from

the ACA, which would be discontinued if we affirmed the district court’s

judgment declaring the entire Act unconstitutional. “[F]inancial loss as a

result of” a district court’s judgment is an injury sufficient to support standing

to appeal. United States v. Fletcher ex rel. Fletcher, 805 F.3d 596, 602 (5th Cir.

2015). In their supplemental briefing, the intervenor-defendant states identify

a few examples of the funding sources they would lose under the district court’s

judgment. Evidence in the record shows that eliminating the Act’s Medicaid

expansion provisions alone would cost the original sixteen intervening state

defendants and the District of Columbia a total of more than $418 billion in

the next decade. See 42 U.S.C. §§ 1396a(a)(10)(A)(i)(VIII), (e)(14)(I)(i),

1396d(y)(1). Moreover, the Act’s Community First Choice Option program

gives states funding to care for the disabled and elderly at home or in their

communities instead of in institutions. See 42 U.S.C. § 1396n(k). Record

evidence shows that eliminating this program would cost California $400

million in 2020, and that Oregon and Connecticut have already received $432.1

million under this program. This evidence is more than enough to show that

the intervenor-defendant states would suffer financially if the district court’s

judgment is given effect, an injury sufficient to confer standing to appeal. See

Dep’t of Commerce v. New York, 139 S. Ct. 2551, 2565 (2019).

The district court’s judgment, if given effect, also threatens to injure the

intervenor-defendant states with the judgment’s potentially preclusive effect

in future litigation. We have held that “[a] party may be aggrieved by a district

court decision that adversely affects its legal rights or position vis-à-vis other

parties agreed that the district court’s partial summary judgment would have binding effect.

Indeed, this is partly why the district court issued a stay. The district court acknowledged

that the intervenor-defendant states would be prejudiced by the judgment, which means that

the district court understood it to be binding.

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parties in the case or other potential litigants.” Leonard v. Nationwide Mut.

Ins., 499 F.3d 419, 428 (5th Cir. 2007) (quoting Custer v. Sweeney, 89 F.3d

1156, 1164 (4th Cir. 1996)). If the federal defendants began unwinding the

ACA, either in reliance on the district court’s judgment or on their own, the

district court’s judgment would potentially estop the intervenor-defendant

states from challenging that action in court. This case thus stands in contrast

to the cases in which there was no chance whatsoever of a preclusive effect.

See Klamath Strategic Inv. Fund ex rel. St. Croix Ventures v. United States,

568 F.3d 537, 546 (5th Cir. 2009) (holding that there was no threatened injury

from potential estoppel from the appealed-from judgment because that

judgment was interlocutory, not final, and therefore could not estop the

appealing party).

Finally, we examine the standing of the U.S. House of Representatives,

which intervened after the case had been appealed. The Supreme Court’s

recent decision in Virginia House of Delegates v. Bethune-Hill calls the House’s

standing to intervene into doubt. 139 S. Ct. at 1953 (“This Court has never

held that a judicial decision invalidating a state law as unconstitutional inflicts

a discrete, cognizable injury on each organ of government that participated in

the law’s passage.”). However, we need not resolve the question of the House’s

standing. “Article III does not require intervenors to independently possess

standing” when a party already in the lawsuit has standing and seeks the same

“ultimate relief” as the intervenor. Ruiz v. Estelle, 161 F.3d 814, 830 (5th Cir.

1998). That is the case here: the intervenor-defendant states have standing to

appeal, and the House seeks the same relief as those states. We accordingly

pretermit the issue of whether the House has standing to intervene.

IV.

We now turn to the issue of whether any of the plaintiffs had Article III

standing to bring this case at the time they brought the lawsuit. To be a case

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or controversy under Article III, the plaintiffs must satisfy the same three

requirements listed above. First, a plaintiff must have suffered an “injury in

fact”—a violation of a legally protected interest that is “concrete and

particularized,” as well as “actual or imminent, not ‘conjectural’ or

‘hypothetical.’” Lujan v. Defs. of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555, 560 (1992) (quoting

Whitmore v. Arkansas, 495 U.S. 149, 155 (1990)). Second, that injury must be

“fairly . . . trace[able] to the challenged action of the defendant, and not . . .

th[e] result [of] the independent action of some third party not before the

court.” Id. (alterations in original) (quoting Simon v. E. Ky. Welfare Rights

Org., 426 U.S. 26, 41–42 (1976)). Third, it must be “likely”—not merely

“speculative”—that the injury will be “redressed by a favorable decision.” Id.

at 561 (quoting Simon, 426 U.S. at 38, 43).

The instant case has two groups of plaintiffs: the individual plaintiffs

and the state plaintiffs. Only one plaintiff need succeed because “one party

with standing is sufficient to satisfy Article III’s case-or-controversy

requirement.” 19 Texas v. United States (DAPA), 809 F.3d 134, 151 (5th Cir.

2015) (quoting Rumsfeld v. Forum for Acad. & Institutional Rights, Inc., 547

U.S. 47, 52 n.2 (2006)), aff’d by an equally divided court, 136 S. Ct. 2271

(2016). 20 The individual plaintiffs and the state plaintiffs allege different

19 For an academic critique of this approach, see Aaron-Andrew P. Bruhl, One Good

Plaintiff Is Not Enough, 67 Duke L. J. 481 (2017).

We refer to this 2015 case as “DAPA”—after Deferred Action for Parents of

20

Americans, the policy at issue there—to prevent confusion with the present case of the same

name.

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injuries. We evaluate each in turn and conclude that both the individual

plaintiffs and the state plaintiffs have standing.

A.

The standing issues presented by the individual plaintiffs are not novel.

The Supreme Court faced a similar situation when it decided NFIB in 2012.

At oral argument in that case, Justice Kagan asked Gregory Katsas,

representing NFIB, whether he thought “a person who is subject to the

[individual] mandate but not subject to the [shared responsibility payment]

would have standing.” Transcript of Oral Argument at 68, Dep’t of Health &

Human Servs. v. Florida, 567 U.S. 519 (2012) (No. 11-398). Mr. Katsas replied,

“Yes, I think that person would, because that person is injured by compliance

with the mandate.” Id. Mr. Katsas explained, “the injury—when that person

is subject to the mandate, that person is required to purchase health insurance.

That’s a forced acquisition of an unwanted good. It’s a classic pocketbook

injury.” Id. at 68–69.

In 2012, this questioning made sense because neither the individual

mandate nor the shared responsibility payment would be assessed for another

two years. Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Pub. L. No. 111-148,

§ 1501, 124 Stat. 119, 244 (2012) (requiring insurance coverage “for each

month beginning after 2013” and applying the shared responsibility payment

for any failure to purchase insurance “during any calendar year beginning

after 2013”). It was thus certainly imminent that the private plaintiffs would

be subject to the individual mandate, which applies to everyone, but not certain

that they would be subject to the shared responsibility payment, which

exempts certain people. 26 U.S.C. § 5000A(e) (prescribing that “[n]o penalty

shall be imposed” on certain groups of people). 21 The distinction was important

21 For the full list of exemptions, see supra note 4.

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because a plaintiff “must demonstrate standing for each claim he seeks to

press.” Davis v. Fed. Election Comm’n, 554 U.S. 724, 734 (2008) (quoting

DaimlerChrysler Corp. v. Cuno, 547 U.S. 332, 352 (2006)). To bring a claim

against the individual mandate, therefore, the plaintiffs needed to show injury

from the individual mandate—not from the shared responsibility payment.

Accordingly, the district court in NFIB ruled that the private plaintiffs

were injured by the ACA “because of the financial expense [they would]

definitively incur under the Act in 2014,” and the private plaintiffs’ need “to

take investigatory steps and make financial arrangements now to ensure

compliance then.” Florida ex rel. Bondi v. U.S. Dep’t of Health & Human

Servs., 780 F. Supp. 2d 1256, 1271 (N.D. Fla. 2011), aff’d in part and rev’d in

part, 648 F.3d 1235 (11th Cir. 2011), aff’d in part and rev’d in part, 567 U.S.

519 (2012). The record evidence in that case supported this conclusion. Mary

Brown, one of the private plaintiffs in that case, for example, had declared that

“to comply with the individual insurance mandate, and well in advance of 2014,

I must now investigate whether and how to rearrange my personal finance

affairs.” Appendix of Exhibits in Support of Plaintiffs’ Motion for Summary

Judgment, Florida v. U.S. Dep’t of Health & Human Servs., No. 3:10-cv-91-

RV/EMT (N.D. Fla. Nov. 10, 2010), ECF No. 80-6. At the Eleventh Circuit, all

parties agreed that Mary Brown had standing. Florida ex rel. Att’y. Gen. v.

U.S. Dep’t of Health & Human Servs., 648 F.3d 1235, 1243 (11th Cir. 2011),

aff’d in part and rev’d in part, 567 U.S. 519 (2012) (“Defendants do not dispute

that plaintiff Brown’s challenge to the minimum coverage provision is

justiciable.”). Congress could have reasonably contemplated people like Mary

Brown. As Mr. Katsas explained at oral argument in the Supreme Court,

“Congress reasonably could think that at least some people will follow the law

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precisely because it is the law.” Transcript of Oral Argument at 67, Dep’t of

Health & Human Servs. v. Florida, 567 U.S. 519 (2012) (No. 11-398).

The district court in the instant case followed a similar approach with

regard to the individual plaintiffs’ standing. 22 It concluded that because the

individual plaintiffs are the object of the individual mandate, which requires

them to purchase health insurance that they do not want, those plaintiffs have

demonstrated two types of “injury in fact”: (1) the financial injury of buying

that insurance; and (2) the “increased regulatory burden” that the individual

mandate imposes. In concluding that these injuries were caused by the

individual mandate, the court made specific fact findings that both Nantz and

Hurley purchased insurance solely because they are “obligated to comply with

the . . . individual mandate.” The district court made these findings based on

Nantz’s and Hurley’s declarations, which the intervenor-defendant states

never challenged. Because the undisputed evidence showed that the

individual mandate caused these injuries, the district court reasoned that a

favorable judgment would redress both injuries, allowing the individual

plaintiffs to forgo purchasing health insurance and freeing them “from what

they essentially allege to be arbitrary governance.”

We agree with the district court. The Supreme Court has held that when

a lawsuit challenges “the legality of government action or inaction, the nature

and extent of facts that must be averred (at the summary judgment stage) or

proved (at the trial stage) in order to establish standing depends considerably

upon whether” the plaintiffs are themselves the “object[s] of the action (or

forgone action) at issue.” Lujan, 504 U.S. at 561; see also Texas v. EEOC, 933

F.3d 433, 446 (5th Cir. 2019). “Whether someone is in fact an object of a

22 No party initially questioned the plaintiffs’ standing in the district court. An amicus

brief raised the issue, and the intervenor-defendant states addressed it at oral argument.

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regulation is a flexible inquiry rooted in common sense.” EEOC, 933 F.3d at

446 (quoting Contender Farms, L.L.P. v. U.S. Dep’t of Agric., 779 F.3d 258, 265

(5th Cir. 2015)). If a plaintiff is indeed the object of a regulation, “there is

ordinarily little question that the action or inaction has caused [the plaintiff]

injury, and that a judgment preventing or requiring the action will redress it.”

Lujan, 504 U.S. at 561–62.

It is undisputed that Hurley and Nantz are the objects of the individual

mandate and that they have purchased insurance in order to comply with that

mandate. Record evidence supports these conclusions. In his declaration in

the district court, Nantz stated, “I continue to maintain minimum essential

health coverage because I am obligated.” Similarly, Hurley averred in his

declaration that he is “obligated to comply with the ACA’s individual

mandate.” They both explain in their declarations that they “value compliance

with [their] legal obligations” and bought insurance because they “believe that

following the law is the right thing to do.” Accordingly, the district court

expressly found that Hurley and Nantz bought health insurance because they

are obligated to, and we must defer to that factual finding. The evidentiary

basis for this injury is even stronger than it was in NFIB. In the instant case,

the individual mandate has already gone into effect, compelling Nantz and

Hurley to purchase insurance now as opposed to two years in the future.

The intervenor-defendant states fail to point to any evidence

contradicting these declarations, and they did not challenge this evidence in

the district court. In fact, some of the evidence these parties rely on actually

supports the conclusion that Nantz and Hurley purchased insurance to comply

with the individual mandate. The intervenor-defendant states acknowledge a

2017 report from the Congressional Budget Office indicating that “a small

number of people” would continue to buy insurance without a penalty “solely

because” of a desire to comply with the law. Cong. Budget Office, Repealing

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the Individual Health Insurance Mandate: An Updated Estimate 1 (Nov. 2017).

This report is at least somewhat consistent with a 2008 Congressional Budget

Office report, relied on by the state plaintiffs, that “[m]any individuals” subject

to the mandate, but not the shared responsibility payment, will obtain

coverage to comply with the mandate “because they believe in abiding by the

nation’s laws.” Cong. Budget Office, Key Issues in Analyzing Major Health

Insurance Proposals 53 (Dec. 2008). Whether this group of law-abiding citizens

includes “many individuals” or “a small number of people,” Nantz and Hurley

have undisputed evidence showing that they are a part of this group.

In this context, being required to buy something that you otherwise

would not want is clearly within the scope of what counts as a “legally

cognizable injury.” “Economic injury” of this sort is “a quintessential injury

upon which to base standing.” Tex. Democratic Party v. Benkiser, 459 F.3d 582,

586 (5th Cir. 2006); see also Vt. Agency of Nat. Res. v. United States, 529 U.S.

765, 772–77 (1998) (finding Article III injury from financial harm); Clinton v.

New York, 524 U.S. 417, 432 (1998) (same); Sierra Club v. Morton, 405 U.S.

727, 733–34 (1972) (same); DAPA, 809 F.3d at 155 (same). In Benkiser, for

example, we held that a political party would suffer an injury in fact because

it would need to “expend additional funds” in order to comply with the

challenged regulation. 459 F.3d at 586. In the instant case, the undisputed

record evidence shows that the individual plaintiffs have spent “additional

funds” to comply with the statutory provision that they challenge on

constitutional grounds.

This injury, moreover, is “actual,” not merely a speculative fear about

future harm that may or may not happen. Lujan, 504 U.S. at 560. The record

shows that, at the time of the complaint, Hurley and Nantz held health

insurance, spending money every month that they did not want to spend.

Nantz reports that his monthly premium is $266.56, and Hurley says his is

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$1,081.70. The injury is also “concrete” because it involves the real

expenditure of those funds. See Barlow v. Collins, 397 U.S. 159, 162–63, 164

(1970) (finding a concrete injury when a regulation caused economic harm from

lost profit).

Causation and redressability “flow naturally” from this concrete,

particularized injury. Contender Farms, 779 F.3d at 266. The evidence in the

record from Hurley’s and Nantz’s declarations show that they would not have

purchased health insurance but for the individual mandate, and the

intervenor-defendant states have no evidence to the contrary. A judgment

declaring that the individual mandate exceeds Congress’ powers under the

Constitution would allow Hurley and Nantz to forgo the purchase of health

insurance that they do not want or need. They could purchase health

insurance below the “minimum essential coverage” threshold, or even decide

not to purchase any health insurance at all.

The intervenor-defendant states make several arguments against this

straightforward injury, and all of them come up short. They first argue that

there is no legally cognizable injury because there is no longer any penalty for

failing to comply. In one sense, this argument misses the point. The threat of

a penalty that Hurley and Nantz would face under the pre-2017 version of the

statute is one potential form of injury, but it is far from the only one. We have

held that the costs of compliance can constitute an injury just as much as the

injuries from failing to comply. See, e.g., Benkiser, 459 F.3d at 586. Thus, in

this instance, it is this injury—the time and money spent complying with the

statute, not the penalty for failing to do so—that constitutes the plaintiffs’

injury.

But the intervenor-defendant states also argue that even the costs of

compliance cannot count as an injury in fact if there is no consequence for

failing to comply. The individual mandate’s compulsion cannot inflict a

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cognizable injury, they say, because it is not a compulsion at all. Because the

enforcement mechanism has been removed, the U.S. House contends, it is now

merely a suggestion, at most. We recently rejected this argument in Texas v.

EEOC, when the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission tried to argue

that Texas could not challenge its allegedly non-final administrative guidance

because “the Guidance does not compel Texas to do anything.” 933 F.3d at 448.

We concluded that it would “strain credulity to find that an agency action

targeting current ‘unlawful’ discrimination among state employers—and

declaring presumptively unlawful the very hiring practices employed by state

agencies—does not require action immediately enough to constitute an injury-

in-fact.” 23 Id. The individual mandate is no different. Just like the agency

guidance, the individual mandate targets as “unlawful” the decision to go

without health insurance.

The dissenting opinion grounds its discussion of the issue in the Supreme

Court’s decision in Poe v. Ullman, 367 U.S. 497 (1961). There, the Supreme

Court rejected a challenge to Connecticut’s criminal prohibition on

contraception. The dissenting opinion states that if there was no standing in

Ullman, then there cannot be standing here. The dissenting opinion seems to

treat Ullman as part of the “pre-enforcement challenge” line of cases in which

the Supreme Court analyzed claims of injury based on future enforcement to

determine whether the future enforcement was sufficiently imminent.

Ullman, however, is not cited in the seminal Supreme Court cases of that line.

23 The dissenting opinion states that Texas had standing in Texas v. EEOC because of

the “consequences for disobeying the [challenged] guidance—including the possibility that

the Attorney General would enforce Title VII against it.” This depiction of Texas v. EEOC

ignores that opinion’s emphasis on the fact that Texas was “the object of the Guidance.” 933

F.3d at 446; see also id. (“If, in a suit ‘challenging the legality of government action,’ ‘the

plaintiff is himself an object of the action . . . there is ordinarily little question that the action

or inaction has caused him injury . . . .’” (quoting Lujan, 504 U.S. at 561–62)). As explained

above, the individual plaintiffs in this case are the objects of the individual mandate.

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See, e.g., Susan B. Anthony List v. Driehaus, 573 U.S. 149, 158–61 (2014);

Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, 561 U.S. 1, 15 (2010); Virginia v. Am.

Booksellers Ass’n, Inc., 484 U.S. 383, 392–93 (1988); Babbitt v. United Farm

Workers Nat’l Union, 442 U.S. 289, 298 (1979); see also Abbott Labs. v.

Gardner, 387 U.S. 136, 154 (1967). More importantly, as we have explained,

this case is not a pre-enforcement challenge because the plaintiffs have already

incurred a financial injury. 24

The plurality opinion in Ullman said there was insufficient adversity

between the parties because there was overwhelming evidence—eighty years’

worth of no enforcement of the statute—of “tacit agreement” between

prosecutors and the public not to enforce the anti-contraceptive laws that the

plaintiffs challenged. 367 U.S. at 507–08. As a result, the Court held that the

lawsuit before it was “not such an adversary case as will be reviewed here.” Id.

The fifth, controlling vote in that case—Justice Brennan, who concurred in the

judgment—emphasized that this adverseness was lacking because of the case’s

“skimpy record,” devoid of evidence that the “individuals [were] truly caught

in an inescapable dilemma.” Id. at 509 (Brennan, J., concurring).

By contrast, as documented above, the record in the instant case contains

undisputed evidence that Nantz and Hurley feel compelled by the individual

mandate to buy insurance and that they bought insurance solely for that

24The dissenting opinion also relies on City of Austin v. Paxton, No. 18-50646, ___ F.3d

___, 2019 WL 6520769 (5th Cir. Dec. 4, 2019). That reliance is confusing because City of

Austin is an Ex parte Young case, not a standing case. For the Ex parte Young exception to

Eleventh Amendment sovereign immunity to apply, the state official sued “must have ‘some

connection with enforcement of the challenged act.’” Id. at *2 (alteration omitted) (quoting

Ex parte Young, 209 U.S. 123, 157 (1908)). In City of Austin, the City’s claims against the

Texas Attorney General failed because the City failed to show the requisite connection to

enforcement under Ex parte Young. Of course, because this is a lawsuit against the federal

government, neither the Eleventh Amendment nor Ex parte Young applies. Moreover, even

if City of Austin had been a pre-enforcement challenge standing case, it would still be

irrelevant because this case is not a pre-enforcement challenge.

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reason. Especially in light of the fact that the individual mandate lacks a

similar eighty-year history of nonenforcement, Nantz and Hurley have gone

much further in demonstrating that they are caught in the “inescapable

dilemma” that the Ullman plaintiffs were not.

The intervenor-defendant states also argue that there is no causation

between the individual mandate and Hurley and Nantz’s purchase of

insurance because Hurley and Nantz exercised a voluntary “choice” to

purchase insurance. Because Nantz and Hurley would face no consequence if

they went without insurance, the intervenor-defendant states argue that their

purchase of insurance is not fairly traceable to the federal defendants. Instead,

they claim that Nantz and Hurley impermissibly attempt to “manufacture

standing merely by inflicting harm on themselves.” Glass v. Paxton, 900 F.3d

233, 239 (5th Cir. 2018) (quoting Clapper v. Amnesty Int’l USA, 568 U.S. 398,

416 (2013)).

This argument fails, however, because it conflates the merits of the case

with the threshold inquiry of standing. The argument assumes that 26 U.S.C.

§ 5000A presents not a legal command to purchase insurance, but an option

between purchasing insurance and doing nothing. Because this option exists,

the argument goes, any injury arising from Hurley’s and Nantz’s decisions to

buy insurance instead of doing nothing (the other putative option) is entirely

self-inflicted. This, however, is a merits question that can be reached only after

determining the threshold issue of whether plaintiffs have standing.

Texas v. EEOC makes clear that courts cannot fuse the standing inquiry

into the merits in this way. There, in addition to the injury described above

from the Guidance’s rebuke of Texas’s employment practices as “unlawful,”

Texas claimed it was injured by the EEOC’s curtailing of Texas’s procedural

right to notice and comment before being subject to a regulation. EEOC, 933

F.3d at 447. In rejecting the suggestion that Texas was not truly injured

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because the EEOC had not in fact violated the Administrative Procedure Act’s

notice-and-comment rules, we held that “[w]e assume, for purposes of the

standing analysis, that Texas is correct on the merits of its claim that the

Guidance was promulgated in violation of the APA.” Id. (citing Sierra Club v.

EPA, 699 F.3d 530, 533 (D.C. Cir. 2012)); see also Bennett v. Spear, 520 U.S.

154, 177–78 (1997) (treating constitutional standing and finality as distinct

inquiries).

Indeed, allowing a consideration of the merits as part of a jurisdictional

inquiry would conflict with the Supreme Court’s express decision in Steel Co.

v. Citizens for a Better Environment to not abandon “two centuries of

jurisprudence affirming the necessity of determining jurisdiction before

proceeding to the merits.” 523 U.S. 83, 98 (1998). That case presented both

the question of Article III standing and the merits question of whether the

relevant statute authorized lawsuits for purely past violations. Id. at 86. The

Court rejected any “attempt to convert the merits issue . . . into a jurisdictional

one.” Id. at 93. The Court further rejected the “doctrine of hypothetical

jurisdiction,” under which certain courts of appeals had “proceed[ed]

immediately to the merits question, despite jurisdictional objections” in certain

circumstances. Id. at 93–94. As the district court correctly noted, that is

exactly what the appellants ask this court to do. They urge us to “skip ahead

to the merits to determine § 5000A(a) is non-binding and therefore

constitutional and then revert to the standing analysis to use its merits

determination to conclude there was no standing to reach the merits in the

first place.”

Moreover, even if we were to consider the merits as part of our

jurisdictional inquiry, it would not make a difference in this case. Because we

conclude in Part IV of this opinion that the individual mandate is best read as

a command to purchase insurance (and an unconstitutional one at that), rather

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than as an option between buying insurance or doing nothing, the individual

plaintiffs would have standing even if we considered the merits. 25

B.

We next consider whether the eighteen state plaintiffs have standing,

and we conclude that they do. 26 The state plaintiffs allege that the ACA causes

them both a fiscal injury as employers and a sovereign injury “because it

prevents them from applying their own laws and policies governing their own

healthcare markets.” State Plaintiffs’ Br. at 25. In DAPA, we determined that

the state of Texas was entitled to special solicitude because it was “exercising

a procedural right created by Congress and protecting a ‘quasi-sovereign’

interest.” DAPA, 809 F.3d at 162 (quoting Massachusetts v. EPA, 549 U.S. 497,

520 (2007)); see also id. at 154–55. Because the state plaintiffs in this case

have suffered fiscal injuries as employers, we need not address special

solicitude or the alleged sovereign injuries.

Employers, including the state plaintiffs, are required by the ACA to

issue forms verifying which employees are covered by minimum essential

coverage and therefore do not need to pay the shared responsibility payment.

See 26 U.S.C. § 6055(a) (“Every person who provides minimum essential

coverage to an individual during a calendar year shall, at such time as the

Secretary may prescribe, make a return described in subsection (b).”); 26

U.S.C. § 6056(a) (“Every applicable large employer [that meets certain

25 Even if the individual plaintiffs did not have standing, this case could still proceed

because the state plaintiffs have standing. DAPA, 809 F.3d at 151 (holding that only one

plaintiff needs standing for the court to exercise jurisdiction). “This circuit follows the rule

that alternative holdings are binding precedent and not obiter dictum.” Id. at 178 n.158

(quoting United States v. Potts, 644 F.3d 233, 237 n.3 (5th Cir. 2011)).

26Likewise, even if the state plaintiffs did not have standing, this case could still

proceed because the individual plaintiffs have standing. DAPA, 809 F.3d at 151 (holding that

only one plaintiff needs standing for the court to exercise jurisdiction).

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statutory requirements] shall . . . make a return described in subsection (b).”).

These provisions have led to Form 1095-B and 1095-C statements that

employees receive from their employers around tax time, which include a series

of check boxes indicating the months that employees had health coverage that

complies with the ACA. State Plaintiffs’ Br. at 23. These legally required

reporting practices exist on top of state employers’ own in-house

administrative systems for managing and tracking their employees’ health

insurance coverage.

The record is replete with evidence that the individual mandate itself

has increased the cost of printing and processing these forms and of updating

the state employers’ in-house management systems. For example, Thomas

Steckel, the director of the Division of Employee Benefits within the South

Dakota Bureau of Human Resources, submitted a declaration documenting the

administrative costs that the individual mandate has imposed by way of these

reporting requirements. He said, “[t]he individual mandate caused significant

administrative burdens and expenses to program our IT system to track and

report ACA eligible employees and complete mandatory IRS Form 1095 annual

reports.” Steckel noted specifically that “the individual mandate caused . . .

$100,000.00 [in] ongoing costs” for Form 1095-C administration alone. The

dissenting opinion discards this evidence as conclusory. But as even counsel

for the intervenor-defendant states admitted at oral argument, nobody

challenged this evidence as conclusory in the district court or in the appellate

court. 27 Oral Argument at 5:12.

South Dakota is far from the only state that has been harmed from the

financial cost of the reporting requirements that the individual mandate

27The reason why is obvious: the evidence is not conclusory. This is bread-and-butter

summary judgment practice, not, as the dissenting opinion contends, any “new summary-

judgment rule.” Of course, a properly-included affidavit must be based on personal

29

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aggravates. Judith Muck, the Executive Director of the Missouri Consolidated

Health Care Plan, reported that Missouri’s costs for preparing 1095-B forms,

along with 1094-B forms, are projected to be $47,300 in fiscal year 2019 and

$49,200 in fiscal year 2020. Similarly, Teresa MacCartney, the Chief Financial

Officer of the State of Georgia and the Director of the Georgia Governor’s Office

of Planning and Budget, reported that Georgia’s overall cost of compliance with

the ACA’s reporting requirements “is an estimated net $3.6 million to date.”

MacCartney also reported that after the ACA’s implementation, Georgia’s

Department of Community Health “experienced increased enrollment of

individuals already eligible for Medicaid benefits under pre-ACA eligibility

standards.” This enrollment increase required the Department to enhance its

management systems, which was “very costly.” Blaise Duran, who is the

Manager for Underwriting, Data Analysis and Reporting for the Employees

Retirement System of Texas, further documented Texas’ costs of the reporting

requirements. He declared that the Texas Employees Group Benefits Program

“has made administrative process changes in connection with its ACA

knowledge, and conclusory facts and statements on information and belief cannot be utilized.

See Charles Alan Wright and Arthur R. Miller, Federal Practice and Procedure, § 2738 (4th

ed. 2019). The Steckel affidavit easily satisfies this standard: it is a detailed 8-page

declaration. Steckel attested, under penalty of perjury, that he is “responsible for developing

and implementing the State’s health plan for state employees” and that he is “particularly

familiar with changes in costs, plans, and policies related to the enactment of the ACA

because of my role as the Director of the Division [of Employee Benefits].” He estimates the

financial costs the individual mandate has caused in nine different categories, including

ongoing costs of $10,400 for review of denied appeals, ongoing costs of $100,000 for Form

1095-C administration, and a one-time cost of $3,302,942 as a Transitional Reinsurance

Program fee. For other costs, such as the pre-existing conditions prohibition and the

expanded eligibility for adult dependent children to age 26, he conceded that he was “unable

to accurately estimate the ongoing costs of this mandate.” A determination of standing is

supported by the administration of Form 1095-C, the CBO’s prediction that some individuals

will continue to purchase insurance in the absence of a shared responsibility payment, the

fact that two such individuals are before this court, and the Supreme Court’s observation

that “third parties will likely react in predictable ways.” Department of Commerce, 139 S. Ct.

at 2566.

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compliance, such as those related to the provision of Form 1095-Bs to plan

participants and the Internal Revenue Service.” 28

The intervenor-defendant states and the U.S. House have not challenged

the state plaintiffs’ evidence or presented any evidence to the contrary.

Instead, they argue that the reporting requirements set forth in Sections

6055(a) and 6056(a) “are separate from the mandate and serve independent

purposes.” U.S. House Reply Br. at 19. Therefore, they claim, “any resulting

injury is thus neither traceable to Section 5000A nor redressable by its

invalidation.” U.S. House Reply Br. at 19. But this misreads the undisputed

evidence in the record. The individual mandate commands individuals to get

insurance. Every time an individual gets that insurance through a state

employer, the state employer must send the individual a form certifying that

he or she is covered and otherwise process that information through in-house

management systems. 29 Thus, the reporting requirements in Sections 6055(a)

and 6056(a) flow from the individual mandate set forth in Section 5000A(a).

28 This list is not exhaustive. For instance, Arlene Larson, Manager of Federal Health

Programs and Policy for Wisconsin Employee Trust Funds, declared that the state expended

funds by “hir[ing] a vendor to issue 343 Form 1095-Cs” in 2017. And Mike Michael, Director

of the Kansas State Employee Health Plan, averred that reporting for Form 1094 and 1095

cost the state $43,138 in 2017 and $38,048 in 2018. No record evidence indicates that these

reporting requirements have been eliminated. Moreover, the “standing inquiry remains

focused on whether the party invoking jurisdiction had the requisite stake in the outcome

when the suit was filed.” Davis v. Fed. Election Comm’n, 554 U.S. 724, 734 (2008).

29 Relying on this injury, therefore, does not run afoul of Nat’l Fed’n of the Blind of

Texas v. Abbott, 647 F.3d 202 (5th Cir. 2011). That case prevents plaintiffs from claiming

injury based on provisions whose enforcement would be enjoined only if they are inseverable

from an unconstitutional provision that does not harm the plaintiff. Id. at 210–11. The state

plaintiffs’ injuries stem from the increased administrative costs created by the individual

mandate itself, not from other provisions. To be sure, those costs are created in part by the

individual mandate’s practical interaction with other ACA provisions, like the reporting

requirements. But this is no different from the injuries in DAPA, where the challenged action

interacted with Texas’s driver’s license regulations. It is also no different from Department

of Commerce, where the challenged census question interacted with constitutional rules tying

political representation to a state’s population.

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These costs to the state plaintiffs are well-established. 30 Moreover, the

continuing nature of these fiscal injuries is consistent with Fifth Circuit and

Supreme Court precedent.

In DAPA, we held that the state of Texas had standing to challenge the

federal government’s DAPA program because it stood to “have a major effect

on the states’ fisc.” 809 F.3d at 152. This was because, if DAPA were permitted

to go into effect, it would have “enable[d] at least 500,000 illegal aliens in

Texas” to satisfy Texas’s requirements that the Department of Public Safety

“‘shall issue’ a license to a qualified applicant,” including noncitizens who

present “documentation issued by the appropriate United States agency that

authorizes the applicant to be in the United States.” Id. at 155 (quoting Tex.

Transp. Code §§ 521.142(a), 521.181). Evidence in the record showed that

Texas, which subsidizes its licenses, would “lose a minimum of $130.89 on each

one it issued to a DAPA beneficiary.” Id. Even a “modest estimate” of

30 The dissenting opinion, citing no authority, contends that the state plaintiffs need

evidence that at least one specific “employee enrolled in one of state plaintiffs’ health

insurance programs solely because of the unenforceable coverage requirement.” We have

already explained why the uncontested affidavits suffice. We note, moreover, that the DAPA

court found that Texas had standing because “it would incur significant costs in issuing

driver’s licenses to DAPA beneficiaries”—without requiring that Texas first show that it had

issued a specific license to a specific illegal alien because of DAPA. Finally, the dissenting

opinion’s rule would create a split with our sister circuits. See Massachusetts v. United States

Dep’t of Health & Human Servs., 923 F.3d 209, 225 (1st Cir. 2019) (“[Massachusetts] need

not point to a specific person who will be harmed in order to establish standing in situations

like this.”); California v. Azar, 911 F.3d 558, 572 (9th Cir. 2018), cert. denied sub nom. Little

Sisters of the Poor Jeanne Jugan Residence v. California, 139 S. Ct. 2716 (2019) (“Appellants

fault the states for failing to identify a specific woman likely to lose coverage. Such

identification is not necessary to establish standing.”); Pennsylvania v. President United

States, 930 F.3d 543, 564 (3d Cir. 2019), as amended (July 18, 2019) (“The Government faults

the States for failing to identify a specific woman who will be affected by the Final Rules, but

the States need not define injury with such a demanding level of particularity to establish

standing.”).

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predictable third-party behavior would rack up costs of “several million

dollars.” Id.

The Supreme Court recently applied a similar analysis in Department of

Commerce v. New York, 139 S. Ct. 2551 (2019). In that case, a group of state

and local governments sued to prevent the federal government from including

a question about citizenship status on the 2020 census. Id. at 2563. The

Supreme Court held that these plaintiffs had standing because they met their

burden “of showing that third parties will likely react in predictable ways to

the citizenship question.” Id. at 2566. The census question would likely lead

to “noncitizen households responding . . . at lower rates than other groups,

which in turn would cause them to be undercounted.” Id. at 2565. This

undercounting of third parties would injure the state and local governments

by “diminishment of political representation, loss of federal funds, degradation

of census data, and diversion of resources.” Id.

In both DAPA and Department of Commerce, the state plaintiffs

demonstrated injury by showing that the challenged law would cause third

parties to behave in predictable ways, which would inflict a financial injury on

the states. The instant case is no different. The individual mandate commands

people to ensure that they have minimum health insurance coverage. That

predictably causes more people to buy insurance, which increases the

administrative costs of the states to report, manage, and track the insurance

coverage of their employees and Medicaid recipients. 31

V.

Having concluded that both groups of plaintiffs have standing to bring

this lawsuit, we must next determine whether the individual mandate is a

31 The dissenting opinion contends that our opinion is inconsistent because we rely on

Department of Commerce, in which the Court found that some individuals will predictably

violate the law, in explaining why some individuals will predictably “follow the law regardless

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constitutional exercise of congressional power. We conclude that it is not. We

first discuss the Supreme Court’s holding in NFIB, and then we explain why,

under that holding, the individual mandate is no longer constitutional.

A.

The NFIB opinion was extremely fractured. In that case, Chief Justice

Roberts wrote an opinion addressing several issues. Parts of that opinion

garnered a majority of votes and served as the opinion of the Court. 32 In

relevant part, Part III-A of the Chief Justice’s opinion, joined by no other

Justice, observed that “[t]he most straightforward reading of the [individual]

mandate is that it commands individuals to purchase insurance,” and that,

using that reading of the statute, the individual mandate is not a valid exercise

of Congress’ power under the Interstate Commerce Clause. NFIB, 567 U.S. at

562, 546–61 (Roberts, C.J.). The Constitution, he explained, “gave Congress

the power to regulate commerce, not to compel it.” Id. at 555 (Roberts, C.J.).

For similar reasons, the Chief Justice concluded that this command to

of the incentives.” In a large group, there will predictably be some individuals in each

category. Even the dissenting opinion accepts the Congressional Budget Office’s projection

that some people will buy insurance solely because of a desire to comply with the law. See

Cong. Budget Office, Repealing the Individual Health Insurance Mandate: An Updated

Estimate 1 (Nov. 2017).

32 As a general overview, Chief Justice Roberts’s opinion functioned in the following

way. In Part III-A, Chief Justice Roberts said that the individual mandate was most

naturally read as a command to buy insurance, which could not be sustained under either

the Interstate Commerce Clause or the Necessary and Proper Clause. Though no Justice

joined this part of the opinion, the four dissenting Justices—Justices Scalia, Kennedy,

Thomas, and Alito—agreed with Part III-A in a separate opinion. In Part III-B, the Chief

Justice wrote that even though the most natural reading of the individual mandate was

unconstitutional, the Court still needed to determine whether it was “fairly possible” to read

the provision in a way that saved it from being unconstitutional. In Part III-C, the Chief

Justice—joined by Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, Kagan, and Sotomayor—concluded that the

provision could be construed as constitutional by reading the individual mandate, in

conjunction with the shared responsibility payment, as a legitimate exercise of Congress’

taxing power. This last part of the opinion supported the Court’s ultimate judgment: that

the individual mandate was constitutional as saved.

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purchase insurance could not be sustained under the Constitution’s Necessary

and Proper Clause. Id. The individual mandate was not “proper” because it

expanded federal power, “vest[ing] Congress with the extraordinary ability to

create the necessary predicate to the exercise of” its Interstate Commerce

Clause powers. Id. at 560.

Though no other Justices joined this part of the Chief Justice’s opinion,

the “joint dissent”—joined by Justices Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas, and Alito—

reached the same conclusions on the Interstate Commerce Clause and

Necessary and Proper Clause questions. Id. at 650–60 (joint dissent). A

majority of the court, therefore, concluded that the individual mandate is not

constitutional under either the Interstate Commerce Clause or the Necessary

and Proper Clause.

This limited reading of the Interstate Commerce Clause—and, by

extension, of the Necessary and Proper Clause—was necessary to preserving

“the country [that] the Framers of our Constitution envisioned.” Id. at 554

(Roberts, C.J.). As Chief Justice Roberts observed, if the individual mandate

were a proper use of the power to regulate interstate commerce, that power

would “justify a mandatory purchase to solve almost any problem.” Id. at 553

(Roberts, C.J.). If Congress can compel the purchase of health insurance today,

it can, for example, micromanage Americans’ day-to-day nutrition choices

tomorrow. Id. (Roberts, C.J.); see also id. at 558 (Roberts, C.J.) (reasoning that,

under an expansive view of the Commerce Clause, nothing would stop the

federal government from compelling the purchase of broccoli).

An expansive reading of the Interstate Commerce Clause would be

foreign to the Framers, who saw the clause as “an addition which few oppose[d]

and from which no apprehensions [were] entertained.” Id. at 554 (Roberts,

C.J.) (quoting The Federalist No. 45, at 293 (J. Madison) (C. Rossiter ed.,

1961)). Elevating Congress’ power to “regulate commerce . . . among the

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several states,” U.S. Const. art. I, § 8, cl. 3, to a power to create commerce

among the several states would make a Leviathan of the federal government,

“everywhere extending the sphere of its activity and drawing all power into its

impetuous vortex.” NFIB, 567 U.S. at 554 (Roberts, C.J.) (quoting The

Federalist No. 48, at 309 (J. Madison) (C. Rossiter ed., 1961)). The joint

dissenters similarly noted that the more expansive reading of the Interstate

Commerce Clause would render that provision a “font of unlimited power,” id.

at 653 (joint dissent), or, in the words of Alexander Hamilton, a “hideous

monster whose devouring jaws . . . spare neither sex nor age, nor high nor low,

nor sacred nor profane,” id. (quoting The Federalist No. 33, at 202 (C. Rossiter

ed., 1961)).

In Part III-B, again joined by no other Justice, Chief Justice Roberts

concluded that because the individual mandate found no constitutional footing

in the Interstate Commerce or Necessary and Proper Clauses, the Supreme

Court was obligated to consider the federal government’s argument that, as an

exercise in constitutional avoidance, the mandate could be read not as a

command but as an option to purchase insurance or pay a tax. This “option”

interpretation of the statute could save the statute from being

unconstitutional, as it would be justified under Congress’ taxing power. Id. at

561–63 (Roberts, C.J.); see also id. at 562 (Roberts, C.J.) (“No court ought,

unless the terms of an act rendered it unavoidable, to give a construction to it

which should involve a violation, however unintentional, of the constitution.”

(quoting Parsons v. Bedford, 28 U.S. (3 Pet.) 433, 448–49 (1830))); see also id.

at 563 (Roberts, C.J.) (“The question is not whether that is the most natural

interpretation of the mandate, but only whether it is a ‘fairly possible’ one.”

(quoting Crowell v. Benson, 285 U.S. 22, 62 (1932))).

In Part III-C, the Chief Justice—writing for a majority of the Court,

joined by Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan—undertook that

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inquiry of determining whether it was “fairly possible” to read the individual

mandate as an option and thereby save its constitutionality. See id. at 563–74

(majority opinion). Chief Justice Roberts reasoned that the individual

mandate could be read in conjunction with the shared responsibility payment

in order to save the individual mandate from unconstitutionality. Read

together with the shared responsibility payment, the entire statutory provision

could be read as a legitimate exercise of Congress’ taxing power for four

reasons.

First and most fundamentally, the shared-responsibility payment

“yield[ed] the essential feature of any tax: It produce[d] at least some revenue

for the Government.” Id. at 564. Second, the shared-responsibility payment

was “paid into the Treasury by taxpayers when they file their tax returns.” Id.

at 563 (alternations and internal quotation marks omitted). Third, the amount

owed under the ACA was “determined by such familiar factors as taxable

income, number of dependents, and joint filing status.” Id. Fourth and finally,

“[t]he requirement to pay [was] found in the Internal Revenue Code and

enforced by the IRS, which . . . collect[ed] it in the same manner as taxes.” Id.

at 563–64 (internal quotation marks omitted).

Because of these four attributes of the shared responsibility payment,

the Court reasoned that “[t]he Federal Government does have the power to

impose a tax on those without health insurance.” Id. at 575. The Court

concluded that “[s]ection 5000A is therefore constitutional, because it can

reasonably be read as a tax.” 33 Id. We agree with the dissenting opinion that

“this case begins and ought to end” with NFIB.

33 Seven Justices—Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas,

Breyer, Alito, and Kagan—agreed that the Act’s Medicaid-expansion provisions

unconstitutionally coerced states into compliance. NFIB, 567 U.S. at 575–85 (plurality

opinion); id. at 671–89 (joint dissent). But, in light of a severability clause, Part IV–B of the

Chief Justice’s opinion concluded that the unconstitutional portion of the Medicaid provisions

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B.

Now that the shared responsibility payment amount is set at zero, 34 the

provision’s saving construction is no longer available. The four central

attributes that once saved the statute because it could be read as a tax no

longer exist. Most fundamentally, the provision no longer yields the “essential

feature of any tax” because it does not produce “at least some revenue for the

Government.” Id. at 564. Because the provision no longer produces revenue,

it necessarily lacks the three other characteristics that once rendered the

provision a tax. The shared-responsibility payment is no longer “paid into the

Treasury by taxpayer[s] when they file their tax returns” because the payment

is no longer paid by anyone. Id. at 563 (alteration in original and internal

quotation marks omitted). The payment amount is no longer “determined by

such familiar factors as taxable income, number of dependents, and joint filing

status.” Id. The amount is zero for everyone, without regard to any of these

factors. The IRS no longer collects the payment “in the same manner as taxes”

because the IRS cannot collect it at all. Id. at 563–64 (internal quotation marks

omitted).

Because these four critical attributes are now missing from the shared

responsibility payment, it is, in the words of the state plaintiffs, “no longer

‘fairly possible’ to save the mandate’s constitutionality under Congress’ taxing

could be severed. Id. at 585–88 (plurality opinion). Meanwhile, Justice Ginsburg, joined by

Justice Sotomayor, disagreed that the Act’s mandatory Medicaid expansion was

unconstitutional. Id. at 633 (Ginsburg, J., concurring in the judgment in part, and dissenting

in part). Those two Justices concurred in the judgment with respect to the Chief Justice’s

conclusion that the unconstitutional provisions could be severed from the remainder of the

Act. Id. at 645–46 (Ginsburg, J., concurring in the judgment in part, and dissenting in part).

The four dissenting Justices concluded that the Act’s Medicaid-expansion provisions were

unconstitutionally coercive and rejected the relief of allowing states to opt into Medicaid

expansion. Id. at 671–90 (joint dissent).

34 26 U.S.C. §§ 5000A(c)(2)(B)(iii), (c)(3)(A).

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power.” State Plaintiffs’ Br. at 32. The proper application of NFIB to the new

version of the statute is to interpret it according to what Chief Justice

Roberts—and four other Justices of the Court—said was the “most

straightforward” reading of that provision: a command to purchase insurance.

Id. at 562 (Roberts, C.J.). As the district court properly observed, “the only

reading available is the most natural one.” Under that reading, the individual

mandate is unconstitutional because, under NFIB, it finds no constitutional

footing in either the Interstate Commerce Clause or the Necessary and Proper

Clause. Id. at 546–61 (Roberts, C.J.); id. at 650–60 (joint dissent).

The intervenor-defendant states have several arguments against this

conclusion, all of which fail. They first argue that the saving construction of

the individual mandate, interpreting the provision as an option to buy

insurance or pay a tax, is still “fairly possible.” As the individual plaintiffs

point out, the Court interpreted the individual mandate as an option only

because doing so would save it from being unconstitutional. Accordingly, the

intervenor-defendant states must show that the “option” would still be a

constitutional exercise of Congress’ taxing power. To make that showing, the

intervenor-defendant states reject the plaintiffs’ attempt to read a “some

revenue” requirement into the Constitution’s Taxing and Spending Clause,

arguing instead for a potential-to-produce-revenue requirement. The

individual mandate, they say, is still set out in the Internal Revenue Code. It

still provides a “statutory structure through which” Congress could eventually

tax people for failing to buy insurance. It still includes references to taxable

income, number of dependents, and joint filing status. 26 U.S.C. §§

5000A(b)(3), (c)(2), (c)(4). Further, it still does not apply to individuals who pay

no federal income taxes. 26 U.S.C. § 5000A(e)(2).

The intervenor-defendant states have little support for this reading of

the Taxing and Spending Clause. For starters, NFIB could not be clearer that

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the “produc[tion]” of “at least some revenue for the Government”—not the

potential to produce that revenue—is “the essential feature of any tax.” 567

U.S. at 564 (majority opinion) (emphasis added). As the district court observed,

when determining whether a statute is a tax, the actual production of revenue

is “not indicative, not common—[but] essential.”

The intervenor-defendant states also find no support in United States v.

Ardoin, 19 F.3d 177, 179–80 (5th Cir. 1994). In that unusual case, Congress

had imposed a tax on machine guns, but subsequently outlawed machine guns

altogether, which prompted the relevant agency to stop collecting the tax. Id.

at 179–80. The defendant was convicted not only for possessing a machine gun

but also for failing to pay the tax, which remained on the books. Id. at 178.

The court upheld the conviction on the basis that the tax law at issue could “be

upheld on the preserved, but unused, power to tax or on the power to regulate

interstate commerce.” Id. at 180. But the taxing power was “preserved” in

Ardoin because it was non-revenue-producing only in practice whereas the

“tax” here is actually $0.00 as written on the books. 35 See Fed. Defendants’ Br.

at 32. Expanding Ardoin to apply here would, as the federal defendants point

out, puzzlingly allow Congress to “prohibit conduct that exceeds its commerce

power through a two-step process of first taxing it and then eliminating the tax

while retaining the prohibition.” Fed. Defendants’ Br. at 32.

The intervenor-defendant states argue further that the individual

mandate does not even need constitutional justification because it is merely a

suggestion, not binding legislative action. The individual mandate, they

contend, is no different from the Flag Code, which, though entered into the

35 This distinction also disposes of the intervenor-defendant states’ concern about

“cast[ing] constitutional doubt on taxes with delayed start dates or that Congress has

temporarily suspended for periods of time.” Intervenor-Defendant States’ Br. at 43. In none

of the examples the intervenor-defendant states cite did the statute purport to levy a “tax” of

$0.00.

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pages of the U.S. Code, “was not intended to proscribe conduct.” Dimmitt v.

City of Clearwater, 985 F.2d 1565, 1573 (11th Cir. 1993) (analyzing 36 U.S.C.

§§ 174–76). This argument is just a repackaged version of their argument that

the individual mandate can still be read as an option. But, as the state

plaintiffs, the individual plaintiffs, and the federal defendants point out, the

Supreme Court has already held that the “most straightforward” reading of

the individual mandate—which emphatically demands that individuals “shall”

buy insurance, 26 U.S.C. § 5000A(a)—is as a command to purchase health

insurance. The Court then concluded that that command lacked constitutional

justification. The zeroing out of the shared responsibility payment does not

render the provision any less of a command. Quite the opposite: Chief Justice

Roberts concluded that the greater-than-zero shared responsibility payment

actually converted the individual mandate into an option. NFIB, 567 U.S. at

563–64 (majority opinion). Now that the shared responsibility payment has

been zeroed out, the only logical conclusion under NFIB is to read the

individual mandate as a command, quite unlike the Flag Code. It is an

individual mandate, not an individual suggestion.

Moreover, it is not true that when the Court adopts a limiting

construction to avoid constitutional questions, that construction controls as to

all applications of the statute, regardless of whether the original constitutional

implications are present. The case on which the U.S. House relies involved

different applications of an identical statute to different facts. Clark v.

Martinez, 543 U.S. 371, 380 (2005) (rejecting the argument that “the

constitutional concerns that influenced” a previous interpretation of a

provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act were “not present for” the

aliens at issue in that case). This case is readily distinguishable because the

four characteristics that made the previous interpretation possible—the

production of revenue and other tax-like features—have now been legislatively

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removed. The limiting construction is no longer available as a matter of

statutory interpretation. The interpretation must accordingly change to

comport with what five Justices of the Supreme Court have said is the “most

straightforward reading” of that interpretation. 36

The dissenting opinion justifies its continued reliance on the saving

construction—even though it is no longer applicable—by citing Kimble v.

Marvel Entm’t, LLC, 135 S. Ct. 2401 (2015). This approach fares no better.

The dissenting opinion quotes Kimble to say that “in whatever way reasoned,”

the Court’s interpretation “effectively become[s] part of the statutory scheme,

subject . . . to congressional change.” Id. at 2409. The dissenting opinion

correctly acknowledges that the individual mandate was never changed. But

what did change was the provision that actually mattered: the shared

responsibility payment. When it was set above zero, it could be saved as a tax,

even though five justices agreed this was an unnatural reading. It would be

puzzling if Congress could change a statute at will, entirely insulated from

constitutional infirmity, just because the Court had previously used

constitutional avoidance to save a previous version of the statute.

The intervenor-defendant states argue furthermore that the individual

mandate can now be constitutional under the Interstate Commerce Clause

because it does not compel anyone into commerce. This is again a repackaged

version of their argument that the individual mandate is an option even

36Contrary to the dissenting opinion’s suggestion, a saving construction is no longer

available. The canon of constitutional avoidance applies only “when statutory language is

susceptible of multiple interpretations.” Jennings v. Rodriguez, 138 S. Ct. 830, 836 (2018).

In NFIB, § 5000A was amenable to two possible interpretations. It was either “a command

to buy insurance” or “a tax.” NFIB, 567 U.S. at 574 (Roberts, C.J.). After Congress zeroed

out the shared responsibility payment, one of those possible interpretations fell away. What

was then the “most straightforward reading” is now the only available reading: it is a

“command to buy insurance” and “the Commerce Clause does not authorize such a command.”

Id.

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without a revenue-generating shared responsibility payment, an argument

that, as the state plaintiffs point out, the Supreme Court has already rejected.

This argument, as the district court observed, is also logically inconsistent. If

the individual mandate no longer truly compels anything, then it can hardly

be said to be a “regulat[ion]” of interstate commerce. In the words of the

district court, the intervenor-defendant states “hope to have their cake and eat

it too.” 37

Finally, we would be remiss if we did not engage with the dissenting

opinion’s contention that § 5000A is not an exercise of legislative power. This

would likely come as a shock to the legislature that drafted it, the president

who signed it, and the voters who celebrated or lamented it. It is not surprising

that the dissenting opinion can cite no case in which a federal court deems a

duly enacted statute not an exercise of legislative power, much less a statute

that clearly commands that an individual “shall” do something. 38 The

dissenting opinion is inconsistent on this point: it argues that the provision’s

status as an exercise of legislative power fluctuates according to the amount of

the shared responsibility payment while simultaneously contending that “if

the text of the coverage requirement has not changed, its meaning could not

37Any argument that the individual mandate can now be sustained under the

Necessary and Proper Clause fails for the same reasons. The individual mandate now must

be read as a command, and five Justices in NFIB already rejected the argument that such a

command could be sustained under the Necessary and Proper Clause. NFIB, 567 U.S. at 561

(Roberts, C.J.); id. at 654–55 (joint dissent).

38 The dissenting opinion’s theory of the “law that does nothing” results in some

bizarre metaphysical conclusions. The ACA was signed into law in 2010. No one questions

that when it was signed, § 5000A was an exercise of legislative power. Yet today, the

dissenting opinion asserts, § 5000A is not an exercise of legislative power. So did Congress

exercise legislative power in 2010, as seen from 2015? As seen from 2018? Does § 5000A

ontologically re-emerge should a future Congress restore the shared responsibility payment?

Perhaps, like Schrödinger’s cat, § 5000A exists in both states simultaneously. The dissenting

opinion does not say. Our approach requires no such quantum musings.

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have changed either.” Our decision breaks no new ground. We simply observe

that § 5000A was originally cognizable as either a command or a tax. Today,

it is only cognizable as a command. It has always been an exercise of legislative

power.

***

In NFIB, the individual mandate—most naturally read as a command to

purchase insurance—was saved from unconstitutionality because it could be

read together with the shared responsibility payment as an option to purchase

insurance or pay a tax. It could be read this way because the shared

responsibility payment produced revenue. It no longer does so. Therefore, the

most straightforward reading applies: the mandate is a command. Using that

meaning, the individual mandate is unconstitutional.

VI.

Having concluded that the individual mandate is unconstitutional, we

must next determine whether, or how much of, the rest of the ACA is severable

from that constitutional defect. On this question, we remand to the district

court to undertake two tasks: to explain with more precision what provisions

of the post-2017 ACA are indeed inseverable from the individual mandate; and

to consider the federal defendants’ newly-suggested relief of enjoining the

enforcement only of those provisions that injure the plaintiffs or declaring the

Act unconstitutional only as to the plaintiff states and the two individual

plaintiffs. We address each issue in turn.

A.

The Supreme Court has said that the “standard for determining the

severability of an unconstitutional provision is well established.” Alaska

Airlines, Inc. v. Brock, 480 U.S. 678, 684 (1987). Unless it is “evident that the

Legislature would not have enacted those provisions which are within its

power, independently of that which is not, the invalid part may be dropped if

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what is left is fully operative as a law.” Id. (quoting Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U.S.

1, 108 (1976)).

This inquiry into counterfactual Congressional intent has been

crystallized into a “two-part . . . framework.” NFIB, 567 U.S. at 692 (joint

dissent). First, if a court holds a statutory provision unconstitutional, it then

determines whether the now-truncated statute will operate in “a manner

consistent with the intent of Congress.” Alaska Airlines, 480 U.S. at 685

(emphasis omitted). This first step asks whether the constitutional

provisions—standing on their own, without the unconstitutional provisions—

are “fully operative as a law,” not whether they would simply “operate in some

coherent way” not designed by Congress. Free Enter. Fund v. Pub. Co.

Accounting Oversight Bd., 561 U.S. 477, 509 (2010) (quoting New York v.

United States, 505 U.S. 144, 186 (1992)); NFIB, 567 U.S. at 692 (joint dissent).

Second, even if the remaining provisions can operate as Congress designed

them to, the court must determine if Congress would have enacted the

remaining provisions without the unconstitutional portion. If Congress would

not have done so, then those provisions must be deemed inseverable. Alaska

Airlines, 480 U.S. at 685 (“[T]he unconstitutional provision must be severed

unless the statute created in its absence is legislation that Congress would not

have enacted.”); Free Enter. Fund, 561 U.S. at 509 (“[N]othing in the statute’s

text or historical context makes it evident that Congress, faced with the

limitations imposed by the Constitution, would have preferred no Board at all

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to a Board whose members are removable at will.” (internal quotation marks

omitted)).

Severability doctrine places courts between a rock and a hard place. On

the one hand, courts strive to be faithful agents of Congress, 39 which often

means refusing to create a hole in a statute in a way that creates legislation

Congress never would have agreed to or passed. See Murphy v. NCAA, 138 S.

Ct. 1461, 1482 (2018) (“[Courts] cannot rewrite a statute and give it an effect

altogether different from that sought by the measure viewed as a whole.”

(quoting R.R. Ret. Bd. v. Alton R.R., 295 U.S. 330, 362 (1935))). On the other

hand, courts often try to abide by the medical practitioner’s maxim of “first, do

no harm,” aiming “to limit the solution to the problem” by “refrain[ing] from

invalidating more of the statute than is necessary.” Ayotte v. Planned

Parenthood of N. New England, 546 U.S. 320, 328 (2006); Collins v. Mnuchin,

938 F.3d 553, 592 (5th Cir. 2019) (en banc) (Haynes, J.) (severing

unconstitutional removal restriction from remainder of Federal Housing

Finance Agency’s enabling statute). 40 In fact, courts have a “duty” to “maintain

the act in so far as it is valid” if it “contains unobjectionable provisions

separable from those found to be unconstitutional.” Alaska Airlines, 480 U.S.

at 684 (quoting Regan v. Time, Inc., 468 U.S. 641, 652 (1984) (plurality

opinion)).

The Supreme Court emphasizes this duty so strongly that commentators

have identified “a presumption [of severability] implicit in the Court’s”

severability jurisprudence. Adrian Vermeule, Saving Constructions, 85 Geo.

See Frank H. Easterbrook, Text, History, and Structure in Statutory Interpretation,

39

17 Harv. J. L. & Pub. Pol’y 61, 63 (1994) (“[Courts] are supposed to be faithful agents, not

independent principals.”).

40 Judge Haynes wrote the opinion of the court as to the question of remedy. See

Collins, 938 F.3d at 591.

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L.J. 1945, 1950 n.28 (1997); see also Brian Charles Lea, Situational

Severability, 103 Va. L. Rev. 735, 744 (2017) (“[C]ourts assume that a

legislature intends for any unlawful part of its handiwork to be severable from

all lawful parts in the absence of indicia of a contrary intention.”). This

presumption is strongest when Congress includes a severability clause in the

statutory text; however, “[i]n the absence of a severability clause . . . Congress’s

silence is just that—silence—and does not raise a presumption against

severability.” Alaska Airlines, 480 U.S. at 686.

Nevertheless, the meticulous analysis required by severability doctrine

defies reliance on presumptions or generalities. The Supreme Court’s latest

venture into severability territory, Murphy v. NCAA, 138 S. Ct. 1461 (2018),

provides an example. There, the Court held that the entirety of the

Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act was unconstitutional because

one of its provisions—authorizing private sports gambling—violated the anti-

commandeering doctrine. Id. at 1484. Justice Alito’s majority opinion

separately explored each of the other operative provisions in the act, reasoning

that all of the act’s provisions were “obviously meant to work together” and be

“deployed in tandem.” Id. at 1483. Because Congress would not have wanted

the otherwise-valid provisions “to stand alone,” the Court declined to sever

them. Id. This conclusion prompted a dissent from Justice Ginsburg, who

characterized the majority as “wield[ing] an ax . . . instead of using a scalpel to

trim the statute” and reiterated that “the Court ordinarily engages in a salvage

rather than a demolition operation.” Id. at 1489–90 (Ginsburg, J., dissenting).

These Murphy opinions draw attention to one difficulty inherent in

severability analysis: selecting the right tool for the job. Justice Thomas’

concurring opinion goes further, providing two reasons why navigating

between the Scylla of poking small but critical holes in complex, carefully

crafted legislative bargains and the Charybdis of invalidating more duly

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enacted legislation than necessary stands “in tension with traditional limits on

judicial authority.” Murphy, 138 S. Ct. at 1485 (Thomas, J., concurring).

“[T]he judicial power is, fundamentally, the power to render judgments in

individual cases,” and severability doctrine threatens to violate that vital

separation-of-powers principle in more than one way. Id. (Thomas, J.,

concurring).

First, severability doctrine requires “a nebulous inquiry into

hypothetical congressional intent,” as opposed to the usual judicial bread-and-

butter of “determin[ing] what a statute means.” Id. at 1486 (Thomas, J.,

concurring) (quoting United States v. Booker, 543 U.S. 220 at 321 n.7 (2005)

(Thomas, J., dissenting in part)). Because “Congress typically does not pass

statutes with the expectation that some part will later be deemed

unconstitutional,” id. at 1487, this requirement often leaves courts to exercise

their imagination or “intuitions regarding what the legislature would have

desired had it considered the severability issue.” Lea, supra, at 747. This, in

turn, “enmeshes the judiciary in making policy choices” the Constitution

reserves for the legislature, David H. Gans, Severability as Judicial

Lawmaking, 76 Geo. Wash. L. Rev. 639, 663 (2008), providing unelected

judicial officers with cover to simply implement their own policy preferences.

Second, severability doctrine forces courts to “weigh in on statutory

provisions that no party has standing to challenge, bringing courts

dangerously close to issuing advisory opinions.” Murphy, 138 S. Ct. at 1487

(Thomas, J., concurring); see also Jonathan F. Mitchell, The Writ-of-Erasure

Fallacy, 104 Va. L. Rev. 933, 936 (2018) (“The federal courts have no authority

to erase a duly enacted law from the statute books, [but can only] decline to

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enforce a statute in a particular case or controversy.” 41). As Justice Thomas

points out, when Chief Justice Marshall famously declared that “[i]t is

emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the

law is,” he justified that assertion by explaining that “[t]hose who apply [a]

rule to particular cases, must of necessity expound and interpret that rule.”

Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137, 177 (1803). Yet severability

doctrine directs courts to go beyond the necessary—that is, the application of

a particular statutory provision to a particular case—to consider the viability

of other provisions without even “ask[ing] whether the plaintiff has standing

to challenge those other provisions.” Murphy, 138 S. Ct. at 1487 (Thomas, J.,

concurring). “[S]everability doctrine is thus an unexplained exception to the

normal rules of standing, as well as the separation-of-powers principles that

those rules protect.” Id.

Severability analysis is at its most demanding in the context of sprawling

(and amended) statutory schemes like the one at issue here. The ACA’s

framework of economic regulations and incentives spans over 900 pages of

legislative text and is divided into ten titles. Most of the provisions directly

regulating health insurance, including the one challenged in this case, are

found in Titles I and II. See, e.g., 26 U.S.C. § 5000A(a) (individual mandate);

42 U.S.C. § 300gg-14(a) (requiring insurers offering family plans to cover adult

children until age 26), §§ 18031–18044 (creating health insurance exchanges).

The other titles generally amend Medicare (Title III), fund preventative

healthcare programs (Title IV), seek to expand the supply of healthcare

workers (Title V), enact anti-fraud requirements for Medicare/Medicaid

facilities (Title VI), establish or expand drug regulations (Title VII), create a

41 If that is true, then courts are speaking loosely when they state that they are

“invalidating” or “striking down” a law.

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voluntary long-term care insurance program (Title VIII), address taxation

(Title IX), and improve health care for Native Americans (Title X 42).

The plaintiffs group this host of provisions into three categories for ease

of reference. State Plaintiffs’ Br. at 38. The first category includes the three

core ACA provisions the Supreme Court has called “closely intertwined”: the

individual mandate, 26 U.S.C. § 5000A(a), the guaranteed-issue requirement,

42 U.S.C. §§ 300gg, 300gg-1, and the community-rating requirement, 42 U.S.C.

§ 300gg-4. King, 135 S. Ct. at 2487. The second category includes the

remaining “[m]ajor provisions of the Affordable Care Act,” NFIB, 567 U.S. at

697 (joint dissent), namely other provisions dealing with “insurance

regulations and taxes,” “reductions in federal reimbursements to hospitals and

other Medicare spending reductions,” the insurance “exchanges and their

federal subsidies,” and “the employer responsibility assessment.” See, e.g., 25

U.S.C. § 4980H; 26 U.S.C. § 36B; 42 U.S.C. §§ 1395ww, 18021–22. The third

category includes a variety of minor provisions, for example taxes on certain

medical devices or provisions requiring the display of nutritional content at

restaurants. See, e.g., 21 U.S.C. § 343(q)(5)(H); 26 U.S.C. § 4191(a).

Moreover, Congress has made a number of substantive amendments to

the ACA, revising the statute in 2010, 2011, 2014, 2017, and 2018. See, e.g.,

Medicare and Medicaid Extenders Act of 2010, Pub. L. No. 111-309, 124 Stat.

3285 (2010) (modifying tax credit scale and Medicaid requirements);

Department of Defense and Full-Year Continuing Appropriations Act, 2011,

Pub. L. No. 112-10, 125 Stat. 38 (2011) (repealing program that required some

employers to provide some employees with vouchers for purchasing insurance);

Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015, Pub. L. No. 114-74, 129 Stat. 584 (2015)

42 Title X also includes a number of miscellaneous provisions relating to the other

titles.

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(repealing requirement that employers with more than 200 employees enroll

new full-time employees in health insurance and continue coverage for current

employees). Most of these amendments occurred prior to the 2017 legislation

eliminating the shared responsibility payment, but some are more recent. See,

e.g., Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018, Pub. L. No. 115-123, 132 Stat. 64 (2018)

(repealing Independent Payment Advisory Board).

In summary, then, this issue involves a challenging legal doctrine

applied to an extensive, complex, and oft-amended statutory scheme. All

together, these observations highlight the need for a careful, granular

approach to carrying out the inherently difficult task of severability analysis

in the specific context of this case. We are not persuaded that the approach to

the severability question set out in the district court opinion satisfies that

need. The district court opinion does not explain with precision how particular

portions of the ACA as it exists post-2017 rise or fall on the constitutionality of

the individual mandate. Instead, the opinion focuses on the 2010 Congress’

labeling of the individual mandate as “essential” to its goal of “creating

effective health insurance markets,” 42 U.S.C. § 18091(2)(I), and then proceeds

to designate the entire ACA inseverable. In using this approach, the opinion

does not address the ACA’s provisions with specificity, nor does it discuss how

the individual mandate fits within the post-2017 regulatory scheme of the

ACA.

The district court opinion begins by addressing the 2010 version of the

ACA. Starting with the text of the ACA, the district court opinion points out

that the 2010 Congress incorporated into the text its view that “the absence of

the [individual mandate] would undercut Federal regulation of the health

insurance market.” 42 U.S.C. § 18091(2)(H). The district court opinion notes

that the 2010 Congress devised the individual mandate, “together with the

other provisions” of the ACA, to “add millions of new customers to the health

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insurance market.” 42 U.S.C. § 18091(2)(C). In this way, the 2010 Congress

sought to “minimize th[e] adverse selection” that might otherwise occur if

healthy individuals “wait[ed] to purchase health insurance until they needed

care,” 42 U.S.C. § 18091(2)(I)—a strategic choice that would otherwise be

available given the ACA’s guaranteed-issue and community-rating provisions.

According to the district court opinion: because the 2010 Congress found the

individuate mandate “essential” to this plan to reshape health insurance

markets, the individual mandate is inseverable from the rest of the ACA “[o]n

the unambiguous enacted text alone.”

The district court opinion also addresses ACA caselaw. Citing the

Supreme Court’s decisions in NFIB and King, the district court opinion states

that “[a]ll nine Justices . . . agreed the Individual Mandate is inseverable from

at least the pre-existing-condition provisions.” See NFIB, 567 U.S. at 548

(Roberts, C.J.), 596–98 (Ginsburg, J., joined by Breyer, Kagan, and Sotomayor,

JJ.), 695–96 (joint dissent of Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas, and Alito, JJ.); King,

135 S. Ct. at 2487 (stating that the individual mandate is “closely intertwined”

with the guaranteed-issue and community-rating provisions). As to the ACA’s

other provisions, the district court opinion notes that the only group of Justices

who fully considered whether the other major and minor provisions were

severable was the joint dissent in NFIB—and those Justices would have held

that “invalidation of the ACA’s major provisions requires the Court to

invalidate the ACA’s other provisions.” NFIB, 567 U.S. at 704 (joint dissent).

Beyond these points, the district court opinion states that its “conclusion

would only be reinforced” if it “parse[d] the ACA’s provisions one by one.” The

district court opinion arrives at this conclusion by reasoning that declaring

only the individual mandate unlawful would disrupt the Act’s careful balance

of “shared responsibility.” The district court opinion lists a few examples of

how it would expect this to happen with regard to the ACA’s major provisions.

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First, the district court opinion reasons that “the Individual Mandate reduces

the financial risk forced upon insurance companies and their customers by the

ACA’s major regulations and taxes.” If the individual mandate fell and the

regulations and taxes did not, insurance companies would suffer a burden

without enjoying a countervailing benefit—“a choice no Congress made and

one contrary to the text.” Second, if a court were to declare just the individual

mandate and the protections for preexisting conditions unlawful—but not the

subsidies for health insurance—then the Act would be transformed into “a law

that subsidizes the kinds of discriminatory products Congress sought to

abolish at, presumably, the re-inflated prices it sought to suppress.” Third,

Congress never intended “a duty on employers, see 26 U.S.C. § 4980H, to cover

the skyrocketing insurance premium costs” that would “inevitably result from

removing” the individual mandate. Fourth, because “the Medicaid-expansion

provisions were designed to serve and assist fulfillment of the Individual

Mandate,” removing the individual mandate would remove the need for that

expansion.

As to the ACA’s minor provisions, the district court opinion states that it

is “impossible to know which minor provisions Congress would have passed

absent the Individual Mandate,” and that such an inquiry involves too much

“legislative guesswork.” Relying on the 2010 Congress’ labeling of the

individual mandate as “essential,” the district court opinion ultimately

determines that there is “no reason to believe that Congress would have

enacted” the minor provisions independently. The district court opinion

similarly disclaims the ability to divine the intent of the 2017 Congress—which

had zeroed out the shared responsibility payment but left the rest of the ACA

untouched—labeling such an inquiry “a fool’s errand.” To the extent it

analyzed the intent of the 2017 Congress, the district court opinion determines

that Congress’ failure to repeal the individual mandate shows that it “knew

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that provision is essential to the ACA.” In sum, the district court opinion

concludes that the entire ACA is inseverable from the individual mandate.

The plaintiffs urge affirmance for essentially the same reasons stated in

the district court opinion. 43 As to the guaranteed-issue and community-rating

provisions, they rely primarily on the 2010 Congress’ express findings linking

those provisions to the individual mandate. State Plaintiffs’ Br. at 39–44;

Individual Plaintiffs’ Br. at 47–48. The 2010 Congress found that, without the

individual mandate, “many individuals would wait to purchase health

insurance until they needed care,” creating an “adverse selection” problem. 42

U.S.C. § 18091(2)(I); see also id. (finding that the individual mandate is

“essential to creating effective health insurance markets in which improved

health insurance products that are guaranteed issue and do not exclude

coverage of pre-existing conditions can be sold”). As to the remaining major

and some of the minor provisions, the plaintiffs rely primarily on the joint

dissent in NFIB for the proposition that leaving these provisions standing

would “undermine Congress’ scheme of shared responsibility,” throwing off the

balance of the interlocking insurance market reforms set out in the ACA. 567

U.S. at 698 (joint dissent) (internal quotation marks omitted); State Plaintiffs’

Br. at 44–49. As for the most minor provisions, they argue that these were

“mere adjuncts” of the more important provisions and would not have been

independently enacted. State Plaintiffs’ Br. at 50.

On appeal, the federal defendants agree with the plaintiffs that the

entirety of the ACA is inseverable from the individual mandate. Fed.

Defendants’ Br. at 36–49. This marks a significant change in litigation

position, as the federal defendants had previously submitted to the district

43 The individual plaintiffs adopt the state plaintiffs’ severability arguments by

reference. See Fed. R. App. P. 28(i).

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court that only the guaranteed-issue and community-rating provisions were

inseverable. And that is not the only new argument the federal defendants

make on appeal. For the first time on appeal, the federal defendants argue

that the remedy in this case should be limited to enjoining enforcement of the

ACA only to the extent it harms the plaintiffs. See Fed. Defendants’ Br. at 26–

29 (arguing that the individual “plaintiffs do not have standing to seek relief

against provisions of the ACA that do not in any way affect them”); Fed.

Defendants’ Supp. Br. at 10 (“[T]he judgment itself, as opposed to its

underlying legal reasoning, cannot be understood as extending beyond the

plaintiff states to invalidate the ACA in the intervenor states.”).

The intervenor-defendant states, meanwhile, argue that every provision

of the ACA is severable from the individual mandate. They argue that the

2017 Congress’ decision not to repeal or otherwise undermine any other

provision of the ACA shows that it intended the rest of the ACA to remain

operative—and that the court should not focus on the intent of the 2010

Congress. Intervenor-Defendant States’ Br. at 34–35, 43. They point to the

statements of several legislators in the 2017 Congress that seem to evince an

assumption that other parts of the ACA would not be altered, 44 and to

Congress’ knowledge of reports highlighting the severe consequences a total

44 Although we decline to opine on the merits of the parties’ arguments at this

juncture, we caution against relying on individual statements by legislators to determine the

meaning of the law. “[L]egislative history is not the law.” Epic Sys. Corp. v. Lewis, 138 S.

Ct. 1612, 1631 (2018); see also Asadi v. G.E. Energy (USA), LLC, 720 F.3d 620, 626 n.9 (5th

Cir. 2013) (“[T]he authoritative statement is the statutory text, not the legislative history or

any other extrinsic material.” (quoting Exxon Mobil Corp. v. Allapattah Servs., Inc., 545 U.S.

546, 568 (2005))); Antonin Scalia & Bryan A. Garner, Reading Law: The Interpretation of

Legal Texts 392–93 (2012) (“Each member voting for the bill has a slightly different reason

for doing so. There is no single set of intentions shared by all . . . [y]et a majority has

undeniably agreed on the final language that passes into law . . . and that is the sole means

by which the assembly has the authority to make law.”). And even among legislative history

devotees, “floor statements by individual legislators rank among the least illuminating

forms.” N.L.R.B. v. SW Gen., Inc., 137 S. Ct. 929, 943 (2017).

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invalidation of the ACA would have. Intervenor-Defendant States’ Br. at 40.

Finally, they argue that the passage of time since the ACA’s enactment has

shown that the individual mandate is not all that crucial after all, and they

provide examples of ACA provisions they say have nothing to do with insurance

markets or became operative years before the individual mandate took effect.

Intervenor-Defendant States’ Br. at 45.

Although we understand and share the district court’s general

disinclination to engage in what it refers to as “legislative guesswork”—and

what a Supreme Court Justice has described as “a nebulous inquiry into

hypothetical congressional intent,” Murphy, 138 S. Ct. at 1486 (Thomas, J.,

concurring) (quoting Booker, 543 U.S. at 321 n.7 (Thomas, J., dissenting in

part))—we nevertheless conclude that the severability analysis in the district

court opinion is incomplete in two ways.

First, the opinion gives relatively little attention to the intent of the 2017

Congress, which appears in the analysis only as an afterthought despite the

fact that the 2017 Congress had the benefit of hindsight over the 2010

Congress: it was able to observe the ACA’s actual implementation. Although

the district court opinion states that burdening insurance companies with

taxes and regulations without giving them the benefit of compelling the

purchase of their product is “a choice no Congress made,” it only links this

observation to the 2010 Congress. It does not explain its statement that the

2017 Congress’ failure to repeal the individual mandate is evidence of an

understanding that no part of the ACA could survive without it.

Second, the district court opinion does not do the necessary legwork of

parsing through the over 900 pages of the post-2017 ACA, explaining how

particular segments are inextricably linked to the individual mandate. The

opinion lists a few examples of major provisions and cogently explains their

link to the individual mandate, at least as it existed in 2010. For example, the

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opinion discusses the individual mandate’s interplay with the guaranteed-

issue and community-rating provisions—all of which are found in Title I of the

ACA—analyzing how Congress intended those provisions to work and how

they might be expected to work without the individual mandate. But in order

to strike the delicate balance that severability analysis requires, the district

court must undertake a similar inquiry for each segment of the post-2017 law

that it ultimately declares unlawful—and it has not done so. Instead, the

district court opinion focuses on the 2010 Congress’ designation of the

individual mandate as “essential to creating effective health insurance

markets” and intention that, for at least one set of legislative goals, the

individual mandate was to work “together with the other provisions” of the

ACA. E.g., 42 U.S.C. § 18091(2)(I). On this basis, and on the views of the

dissenting Justices in NFIB addressing the ACA as it stood in 2012, the district

court opinion renders the entire ACA inoperative. More is needed to justify

the district court’s remedy.

Take, for example, the ACA provisions in Title IV requiring certain chain

restaurants to disclose to consumers nutritional information like “the number

of calories contained in the standard menu item.” Patient Protection and

Affordable Care Act, Pub. L. No. 111-148, § 4206, 124 Stat. 119, 573–74 (2012)

(codified at 21 U.S.C. § 343). Or consider the provisions in Title X establishing

the level of scienter necessary to be convicted of healthcare fraud. Patient

Protection and Affordable Care Act § 10606, 124 Stat. 119, 1006–09, (codified

at 18 U.S.C. § 1347). Without more detailed analysis from the district court

opinion, it is unclear how provisions like these—which certainly do not directly

regulate the health insurance marketplace—were intended to work “together”

with the individual mandate. Similarly, the district court opinion’s assertion

that “most of the minor provisions” of the ACA “are mere adjuncts of” or “aids

to the[] effective execution” of the project of the individual mandate is not

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supported by the actual analysis in the district court opinion, which does not

dive into those provisions. Finally, some insurance-related reforms became

law years before the effective date of the individual mandate; the district court

opinion does not explain how provisions like these are inextricably linked to

the individual mandate. See, e.g., 42 U.S.C. §§ 300gg-11, 300gg-14(a).

Whatever the solution to the problem of “legislative guesswork” the district

court opinion identifies in severability doctrine as it currently stands, it must

include a careful parsing of the statutory scheme at issue to address questions

like these.

We have long “require[d] that a district court explain its reasons for

granting a motion for summary judgment in sufficient detail for us to

determine whether the court correctly applied the appropriate legal test.”

Wildbur v. ARCO Chem. Co., 974 F.2d 631, 644 (5th Cir. 1992). This is because

we have “little opportunity for effective review” when the district court opinion

leaves some reasoning “vague” or “unsaid.” Myers v. Gulf Oil Corp., 731 F.2d

281, 284 (5th Cir. 1984). “In such cases, we have not hesitated to remand . . . .”

Id. In this case, the analysis the district court opinion provides is substantial

and far exceeds the sort of cursory reasoning that normally prompts us to

remand. Yet, the vast, wide-ranging statutory scheme at issue in this case also

far exceeds the comparatively small number of provisions at issue in other

severability cases, see, e.g., Chadha, 462 U.S. at 931–35 (considering whether

8 U.S.C. § 244(c)(2) could be severed from the rest of § 244)—especially cases

in which entire legislative acts are determined to be inseverable, see, e.g.,

Murphy, 138 S. Ct. at 1481–84 (considering whether part of 28 U.S.C. § 3702(1)

could be severed from §§ 3701–04).

Moreover, the Supreme Court has remanded in the severability context

upon a determination that additional analysis was necessary. In Ayotte v.

Planned Parenthood of Northern New England, 546 U.S. 320 (2006), the

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Supreme Court took up the issue of what relief was appropriate upon a

determination that a New Hampshire provision requiring parental notification

prior to abortion was unconstitutional in some applications. Id. at 328–32.

The Supreme Court determined that, although the district court’s choice to use

“the most blunt remedy”—total inseverability—was “understandable” under

its own precedent, more analysis was needed to determine “whether New

Hampshire’s legislature intended the statute to be susceptible to” severability.

Id. at 330–31. As a result, the Supreme Court remanded for “lower courts to

determine legislative intent in the first instance.” Id.

We do the same here, directing the district court to employ a finer-

toothed comb on remand and conduct a more searching inquiry into which

provisions of the ACA Congress intended to be inseverable from the individual

mandate. We do not hold forth on just how fine-toothed that comb should be—

the district court may use its best judgment to determine how best to break the

ACA down into constituent groupings, segments, or provisions to be analyzed.

Nor do we make any comment on whether the district court should take into

account the government’s new posture on appeal or what the ultimate outcome

of the severability analysis should be. 45 Although “we cannot affirm the order

as it is presently supported,” we do not suggest what result will be merited

“[a]fter a more thorough inquiry.” Unger v. Amedisys Inc., 401 F.3d 316, 325

(5th Cir. 2005). We only note that the inquiry must be made, and that the

district court—which has many tools at its disposal—is best positioned to

determine in the first instance whether the ACA “remains ‘fully operative as a

law’” and whether it is evident from “the statute’s text or historical context”

45 The district court should also consider this court’s recent severability analysis in

Collins v. Mnuchin, 938 F.3d 553 (5th Cir. 2019) (en banc). That opinion was issued after

both the district court’s decision and the oral argument here.

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that Congress would have preferred no ACA at all to an ACA without the

individual mandate. Free Enter. Fund, 561 U.S. at 509 (quoting New York, 505

U.S. at 186).

It may still be that none of the ACA is severable from the individual

mandate, even after this inquiry is concluded. It may be that all of the ACA is

severable from the individual mandate. It may also be that some of the ACA

is severable from the individual mandate, and some is not. 46 But it is no small

thing for unelected, life-tenured judges to declare duly enacted legislation

passed by the elected representatives of the American people unconstitutional.

The rule of law demands a careful, precise explanation of whether the

provisions of the ACA are affected by the unconstitutionality of the individual

mandate as it exists today.

B.

Remand is appropriate in this case for a second reason: so that the

district court may consider the federal defendants’ new arguments as to the

proper scope of relief in this case. The relief the plaintiffs sought in the district

court was a universal nationwide injunction: an order that totally “enjoin[ed]

Defendants from enforcing the Affordable Care Act and its associated

regulations.” Before the district court, the federal defendants urged entry of a

declaratory judgment stating that the guaranteed-issue and community-rating

provisions—at that time, the only provisions the federal defendants argued

were inseverable—were “invalid[ated]” by the zeroing out of the shared

46For an explanation of some, but certainly not all, of the potential conclusions with

regard to severability, see Josh Blackman, Undone: The New Constitutional Challenge to

Obamacare, 23 Tex. Rev. L. & Pol. 1, 28–51 (2018) (stating that the district court could halt

the enforcement of just the individual mandate, halt the enforcement of the entire Act, or

halt the enforcement of the community-rating and guaranteed-issue provisions along with

the individual mandate, for example). The district court could also issue a declaratory

judgment without enjoining any government official.

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responsibility payment. This would be “sufficient relief against the

Government,” the federal defendants argued, because a declaratory judgment

would “operate[] in a similar manner as an injunction” against the federal

government, which would be “presumed to comply with the law” once the court

provides “a definitive interpretation of the statute.”

Ultimately, of course, the district court opinion determined that no ACA

provision was severable and resulted in a judgment declaring the entire ACA

“invalid.” On appeal, the federal defendants first changed their litigation

position to agree that no ACA provision was severable. Now they have changed

their litigation position to argue that relief in this case should be tailored to

enjoin enforcement of the ACA in only the plaintiff states—and not just that,

but that the declaratory judgment should only reach ACA provisions that

injure the plaintiffs. They argue that the Supreme Court has made clear that

“[a] plaintiff’s remedy must be tailored to redress the plaintiff’s particular

injury.” Gill v. Whitford, 138 S. Ct. 1916, 1934 (2018); see also Printz v. United

States, 521 U.S. 898, 935 (1997) (reasoning that the Court has “no business

answering” questions dealing with enforcement of provisions that “burden . . .

no plaintiff”); see also Murphy, 138 S. Ct. at 1485–86 (Thomas, J., concurring).

This argument came as a surprise to the plaintiffs, who explained at oral

argument that they saw the government’s new position as a possible “bait and

switch.” The federal defendants admitted at oral argument that they had

raised the scope-of-relief issue on appeal “for the first time,” but argued that it

was necessary to address, as it went to the district court’s Article III

jurisdiction. The federal defendants therefore suggested that it “would be

appropriate to remand to consider the scope of the judgment.”

The court agrees that remand is appropriate for the district court to

consider these new arguments in the first instance. The district court did not

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have the benefit of considering them when it crafted the relief now on appeal. 47

On remand, the district court—which is in a far better position than this court

to determine which ACA provisions actually injure the plaintiffs—may

consider the federal defendants’ position on the proper relief to be afforded. As

part of this inquiry, the district court may consider whether the federal

defendants’ arguments were timely raised, and whether limiting the remedy

in this case is supported by Supreme Court precedent. Once again, we place

no thumb on the scale as to the ultimate outcome; the district court is free to

weigh the federal defendants’ changed arguments as it sees fit.

VII.

For these reasons, the judgment of the district court is AFFIRMED in

part and VACATED in part. We REMAND for proceedings consistent with

this opinion.

47 The consideration of limited relief may affect the intervenors as well. The district

court is better suited to resolving these issues in the first instance.

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KING, Circuit Judge, dissenting:

Any American can choose not to purchase health insurance without legal

consequence. Before January 1, 2018, individuals had to choose between

complying with the Affordable Care Act’s coverage requirement or making a

payment to the IRS. For better or worse, Congress has now set that payment

at $0. Without any enforcement mechanism to speak of, questions about the

legality of the individual “mandate” are purely academic, and people can

purchase insurance—or not—as they please. No more need be said; it has long

been settled that the federal courts deal in cases and controversies, not

academic curiosities.

The majority sees things differently and today holds that an

unenforceable law is also unconstitutional. If the majority had stopped there,

I would be confident its extrajurisdictional musings would ultimately prove

harmless. What does it matter if the coverage requirement is unenforceable by

congressional design or constitutional demand? Either way, that law does not

do anything or bind anyone.

But again, the majority disagrees. It feels bound to ask whether

Congress would want the rest of the Affordable Care Act to remain in force now

that the coverage requirement is unenforceable. Answering that question

should be easy, since Congress removed the coverage requirement’s only

enforcement mechanism but left the rest of the Affordable Care Act in place. It

is difficult to imagine a plainer indication that Congress considered the

coverage requirement entirely dispensable and, hence, severable. And yet, the

majority is unwilling to resolve the severability issue. Instead, it merely

identifies serious flaws in the district court’s analysis and remands for a do-

over, which will unnecessarily prolong this litigation and the concomitant

uncertainty over the future of the healthcare sector.

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I would vacate the district court’s order because none of the plaintiffs

have standing to challenge the coverage requirement. And although I would

not reach the merits or remedial issues, if I did, I would conclude that the

coverage requirement is constitutional, albeit unenforceable, and entirely

severable from the remainder of the Affordable Care Act.

I.

To my mind, this case begins and ought to end with the Supreme Court’s

decision in National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, 567 U.S.

519 (2012). In that case, the Court held that the coverage requirement would

be unconstitutional if it were a legal command, because neither the Commerce

Clause nor the Necessary and Proper Clause allows Congress to compel

individuals to engage in commerce by purchasing health insurance. See NFIB,

567 U.S. at 552, 560 (opinion of Roberts, C.J.); id. at 652-53 (joint dissent). The

Court concluded, however, that the coverage requirement was constitutional,

because—notwithstanding the most natural reading of the provision’s text—

the coverage requirement was not actually a legal command to purchase

insurance.

Instead, according to the NFIB Court, the coverage requirement “leaves

an individual with a lawful choice to do or not do a certain act,” i.e., purchase

health insurance. Id. at 574 (Roberts, C.J., majority opinion). All that is

required, under this reading, is “a payment to the IRS” if one chooses not to

purchase health insurance. Id. at 567. Beyond this shared-responsibility

payment, there are no further “negative legal consequences to not buying

health insurance,” and individuals who forgo insurance do not violate the law

as long as they make the required payment. Id. at 567. “Those subject to the

[coverage requirement] may lawfully forgo health insurance and pay higher

taxes, or buy health insurance and pay lower taxes. The only thing they may

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not lawfully do is not buy health insurance and not pay the resulting tax.” Id.

at 574 n.11. Forcing individuals to make that choice was constitutional, per

NFIB, because Congress could “impose a tax on not obtaining health

insurance” by exercising its enumerated power to lay and collect taxes, duties,

imposts, and excises. Id. at 570.

Contrary to the suggestion of the majority, which I address specifically

infra at Part III, Congress did not alter the coverage requirement’s operation

when it amended the ACA in 2017. See Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, Pub. L.

No. 115-97, § 11081, 131 Stat. 2054, 2092 (“TCJA”). All the TCJA did, with

respect to healthcare, was change the amount of the shared-responsibility

payment to zero dollars. Thus, despite textual appearances, the post-TCJA

coverage requirement does nothing more than require individuals to pay zero

dollars to the IRS if they do not purchase health insurance, which is to say it

does nothing at all.

This insight, that the coverage requirement now does nothing, should be

the end of this case. Nobody has standing to challenge a law that does nothing.

When Congress does nothing, no matter the form that nothing takes, it does

not exceed its enumerated powers. And since courts do not change anything

when they invalidate a law that does nothing, every other law retains, or at

least should retain, its full force and effect.

II.

But as the majority goes well past NFIB, I respond. To begin, I

emphasize the importance of the rule that a plaintiff must have standing to

invoke a federal court’s power. This is not an anachronism lingering from some

era in which empty formalities abounded in legal practice. Quite the opposite:

“[T]he requirement that a claimant have ‘standing is an essential and

unchanging part of the case-or-controversy requirement of Article III.’” Davis

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v. FEC, 554 U.S. 724, 733 (2008) (quoting Lujan v. Defs. of Wildlife, 504 U.S.

555, 560 (1992)); see also Susan B. Anthony List v. Driehaus, 573 U.S. 149, 157

(2014) (“Article III of the Constitution limits the jurisdiction of federal courts

to ‘Cases’ and ‘Controversies.’” (quoting U.S. Const. art. III, § 2)). And “[n]o

principle is more fundamental to the judiciary’s proper role in our system of

government than the constitutional limitation of federal-court jurisdiction to

actual cases or controversies.” Clapper v. Amnesty Int’l USA, 568 U.S. 398, 408

(2013) (alteration in original) (quoting DaimlerChrysler Corp. v. Cuno, 547

U.S. 332, 341 (2006)); accord Raines v. Byrd, 521 U.S. 811, 818 (1997).

The Constitution’s case-or-controversy requirement reflects the

Framers’ view of the judiciary’s place among the coequal branches of the

federal government: to fulfill “the traditional role of Anglo–American courts,

which is to redress or prevent actual or imminently threatened injury to

persons caused by private or official violation of law.” Summers v. Earth Island

Inst., 555 U.S. 488, 492 (2009). Strict adherence to the case-or-controversy

requirement—and to standing in particular—thus “serves to prevent the

judicial process from being used to usurp the powers of the political branches.”

Clapper, 568 U.S. at 408; see also Town of Chester v. Laroe Estates, Inc., 137 S.

Ct. 1645, 1650 (2017) (“This fundamental limitation preserves the ‘tripartite

structure’ of our Federal Government, prevents the Federal Judiciary from

‘intrud[ing] upon the powers given to the other branches,’ and ‘confines the

federal courts to a properly judicial role.’” (alteration in original) (quoting

Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins, 136 S. Ct. 1540, 1547 (2016))). Thus, “federal courts may

exercise power only ‘in the last resort, and as a necessity,’ and only when

adjudication is ‘consistent with a system of separated powers and [the dispute

is one] traditionally thought to be capable of resolution through the judicial

process.’” Allen v. Wright, 468 U.S. 737, 752 (1984) (alteration in original)

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(citation omitted) (first quoting Chi. & Grand Trunk Ry. Co. v. Wellman, 143

U.S. 339, 345 (1892); then quoting Flast v. Cohen, 392 U.S. 83, 97 (1968)),

abrogated on other grounds, Lexmark Int’l, Inc. v. Static Control Components,

Inc., 572 U.S. 118 (2014). And needless to say, a federal court must conduct an

“especially rigorous” standing inquiry “when reaching the merits of the dispute

would force [it] to decide whether an action taken by one of the other two

branches of the Federal Government was unconstitutional.” Amnesty Int’l, 568

U.S. at 408 (quoting Raines, 521 U.S. at 819-20). “The importance of this

precondition should not be underestimated as a means of ‘defin[ing] the role

assigned to the judiciary in a tripartite allocation of power.’” Valley Forge

Christian Coll. v. Ams. United for Separation of Church & State, 454 U.S. 464,

474 (1982) (alteration in original) (quoting Flast, 392 U.S. at 95).

The standing doctrine polices this constitutional limit on the judiciary’s

power “by ‘identify[ing] those disputes which are appropriately resolved

through the judicial process.’” Susan B. Anthony List, 573 U.S. at 157

(alteration in original) (quoting Lujan, 504 U.S. at 560). The party seeking

redress in the courts has the burden to establish standing. See Spokeo, 136 S.

Ct. at 1547. To do so, the plaintiff must show it has “(1) suffered an injury in

fact, (2) that is fairly traceable to the challenged conduct of the defendant, and

(3) that is likely to be redressed by a favorable judicial decision.” Id. “To

establish injury in fact, a plaintiff must show that he or she suffered ‘an

invasion of a legally protected interest’ that is ‘concrete and particularized’ and

‘actual or imminent, not conjectural or hypothetical.’” Id. at 1548 (quoting

Lujan, 504 U.S. 560). This means the injury must be “personal” to the plaintiff

and, although the injury does not need to be “tangible,” “it must actually exist.”

Id. at 1548-49.

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The plaintiffs’ evidentiary burden depends on the stage of the litigation.

At each stage, the plaintiffs must demonstrate standing “with the manner and

degree of evidence” otherwise required to establish the plaintiffs’ merits case.

Lujan, 504 U.S. at 561. Thus, because this case comes to us on the plaintiffs’

own motion for summary judgment, the plaintiffs must conclusively prove all

three elements of standing with evidence that “would ‘entitle [them] to a

directed verdict if the evidence went uncontroverted at trial.’” Int’l Shortstop,

Inc. v. Rally’s, Inc., 939 F.2d 1257, 1264-65 (5th Cir. 1991) (quoting Golden

Rule Ins. Co. v. Lease, 755 F. Supp. 948, 951 (D. Colo. 1991)). If a plaintiff meets

its burden, the defendant can nevertheless defeat summary judgment “by

merely demonstrating the existence of a genuine dispute of material fact.” Id.

at 1265. In other words, the plaintiffs here must show that, considering the

summary-judgment record, all reasonable factfinders would agree that the

plaintiffs demonstrate an injury traceable to the coverage requirement and

redressable by a favorable decision. See Alonso v. Westcoast Corp., 920 F.3d

878, 885-86 (5th Cir. 2019).

These general principles alone should make the majority’s error

apparent. More specific authority illuminates it. I explain first why the

majority errs in concluding the individual plaintiffs have standing, then I

explain why the majority errs in concluding the state plaintiffs have standing.

A.

The majority concludes that the individual plaintiffs have standing to

challenge the coverage requirement in the Patient Protection and Affordable

Care Act (the “ACA”), 26 U.S.C. § 5000A(a), 1 because it forces them to purchase

1The coverage requirement is sometimes colloquially known as the “individual

mandate.” For reasons that will become clear, this nickname can be misleading.

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health insurance that they would not purchase otherwise. The majority

overlooks what will happen if the individual plaintiffs fail to purchase

insurance: absolutely nothing. The individual plaintiffs will be no worse off by

any conceivable measure if they choose not to purchase health insurance. Thus,

whatever injury the individual plaintiffs have incurred by purchasing health

insurance is entirely self-inflicted.

A long line of cases establishes that self-inflicted injuries cannot

establish standing because a self-inflicted injury, by definition, is not traceable

to the challenged action. See, e.g., Amnesty Int’l, 568 U.S. at 416

(“[R]espondents cannot manufacture standing merely by inflicting harm on

themselves . . . .”); Pennsylvania v. New Jersey, 426 U.S. 660, 664 (1976) (“The

injuries to the plaintiffs’ fiscs were self-inflicted, resulting from decisions by

their respective state legislatures. . . . No State can be heard to complain about

damage inflicted by its own hand.”); Zimmerman v. City of Austin, 881 F.3d

378, 389 (5th Cir.) (“[S]tanding cannot be conferred by a self-inflicted injury.”),

cert. denied, 139 S. Ct. 639 (2018). When a plaintiff chooses to incur an expense,

the plaintiff must show that the challenged law forced the plaintiff to incur

that expense to avoid some other concrete injury. See Amnesty Int’l, 568 U.S.

at 415-16 (concluding costs plaintiffs incurred trying to avoid surveillance were

self-inflicted because plaintiffs’ fear of surveillance was speculative);

Contender Farms, L.L.P. v. USDA, 779 F.3d 258, 266 (5th Cir. 2015) (finding

plaintiff had standing to challenge regulations that required plaintiff to either

“take additional measures” to comply with regulation or “face harsher,

mandatory penalties” and prosecution). In other words, a plaintiff can show

standing if the challenged act placed him between the proverbial rock and hard

place. But without showing such a dilemma, a plaintiff “cannot manufacture

standing” by expending costs to avoid an otherwise noncognizable injury,

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which is exactly what the individual plaintiffs did here. Amnesty Int’l, 568 U.S.

at 416.

The majority brushes off this authority by insisting—without

explanation—that labeling the plaintiffs’ injuries self-inflicted “assumes” that

the coverage requirement does not act as a legal command to purchase

insurance, which the majority refuses to question at the standing stage. The

majority misunderstands the argument. Even accepting that the coverage

requirement acts as a legal command, the individual plaintiffs are still free to

disregard that command without legal consequence. Therefore, any injury they

incur by freely choosing to obtain insurance is still self-inflicted.

Nor does it matter that to avoid inflicting injury upon themselves, the

plaintiffs would have to violate an unenforceable statute. Plaintiffs may

challenge a statute that requires them “to take significant and costly

compliance measures or risk criminal prosecution.” Virginia v. Am. Booksellers

Ass’n, 484 U.S. 383, 392 (1988) (emphasis added); see also, e.g., Int’l Tape Mfrs.

Ass’n v. Gerstein, 494 F.2d 25, 28 (5th Cir. 1974) (explaining that standing to

challenge a statute requires a “realistic possibility that the challenged statute

will be enforced to [the plaintiff’s] detriment”). But “[w]hen plaintiffs ‘do not

claim that they have ever been threatened with prosecution, that a pro

This text is long and has been trimmed here. Open the source document for the complete record.