WASHINGTON, D.C., March 26, 2019 – The Justice Department, under Attorney General William Barr, has signaled that it will file a brief in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals seeking to have the entire Affordable Care Act declared unconstitutional. AFJ President Nan Aron released the following statement:
“With this planned filing in the Fifth Circuit, the Trump Administration’s court-based strategy to destroy health care is coming fully into focus. We’ve seen the first part of this strategy in action: pack the courts with judges opposed to the ACA and install an anti-ACA attorney general. Now they’re going in for the kill, with a court case designed to destroy the ACA once and for all — a goal so unpopular with the American people that there was no way Republicans could do it through legislation. This is a despicable strategy with the equally despicable goal of stripping millions of Americans of desperately needed health care, and it’s incredibly painful to see our courts being abused for this purpose.”