A federal judge in Texas on Friday struck down the entire Affordable Care Act, popular as Obamacare, ruling that the health-care law’s individual coverage mandate was “unconstitutional”, handing a major political victory to US President Donald Trump who has long been seeking its end.
The ruling was over a lawsuit filed this year by a group of Republican governors and state attorneys general. It came on the eve of the Saturday deadline for Americans to sign up for coverage in the federal insurance exchange created under the law.
In a ruling, that is likely to be challenged and was immediately opposed by the Democrats, District Court Judge Reed O’Connor ruled that the individual mandate of Affordable Care Act requiring people to have health insurance “can no longer be sustained as an exercise of Congress’s tax power”.