The future of Obamacare is at stake next week, when the country’s most conservative appeals court will consider whether to uphold a ruling striking down the whole law. But the politically fraught, high-stakes case is at least likely to get a fair hearing by three judges whose names were announced yesterday, legal experts say.
Two of the judges were GOP-appointed; they include Jennifer Walker Elrod, a George W. Bush appointee, and Kurt Damian Engelhardt, an appointee of President Trump. But they’re known for being some of the more measured and thoughtful members of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, distinct from other judges who might be more politically inclined.
“There’s no doubt there are a couple firebrand jurists out there … but none of those judges are on this panel,” New Orleans litigator Harry Morse, who has argued before Engelhardt, told me.
“There’s nothing about these three that strikes me that they’ll be looking for headlines or take a stand on anything other than their fair reading of the law,” he added. “They’re all pretty careful folks.”
A third judge, Carolyn Dineen King, was appointed by former Democratic president Jimmy Carter. She, along with Elrod and Engelhardt, will hear oral arguments on July 9 in the closely watched lawsuit brought by nearly two dozen GOP-led states who are trying to unravel the ACA, even after it survived years of court challenges and repeal attempts in Congress.
It’s a deeply disturbing situation for California and other Democrat-led states defending the health-care law, who fear its consumer protections and insurance expansions could be wiped out in a moment. They’ve stepped up to defend the law because President Trump’s Justice Department is refusing to do so — even though a decision overturning the law would create a logistical and political mess for the administration.
The states, led by Texas, were certainly strategic in where they mounted the challenge. The 5th Circuit — whose 16 active judges include 11 appointed by Republicans — is widely viewed as being more sympathetic to Republican arguments that the ACA must now be struck down because Congress repealed the basis for its constitutionality, the individual mandate to buy coverage.
Because the panels are chosen randomly, it would have been unlikely for the trio hearing next week’s ACA lawsuit to include three or even two judges appointed by Democrats. The Elrod-Engelhardt-King panel is a good reflection of the 5th Circuit’s overall makeup, said Barry Edwards, a lecturer at the University of Central Florida who has written about U.S. appeals courts.
“I’d say the Democratic states were hoping for a better panel, but this is the panel they expected,” Edwards said.
Engelhardt was sent to the 5th Circuit by Trump, who relies heavily on recommendations from the influential Federalist Society. But he was initially made a federal district judge by George W. Bush, indicating he may not be as far to the political right as the judges Trump tends to favor, Edwards told me.
Engelhardt has been on the 5th Circuit for a little more than a year, while Elrod has been on its bench since 2007.
Even those familiar with the 5th Circuit find it hard to predict how the panel will land on last year’s district court ruling striking down the entire ACA, the decision the states are appealing. Its ruling will have bearing on whether the Supreme Court agrees to hear yet another challenge to the ACA, after upholding most of the law in 2012 and then again in 2015.
Edwards guesses the appeals court will upheld the lower-court decision scrapping the health-care law — a scenario in which the Supreme Court would almost certainly take up the case, given how many people the law has touched. But Morse said it’s hard for him to believe the judges would agree to strike down the ACA given how many times it has survived past legal challenges.
“I know it’s two Republican judges and one Democratic judge, but the ACA has been challenged twice in front of the Supreme Court,” Morse said. “The argument being made is the ACA can’t survive without the individual mandate, and Congress has implicitly rejected that.”
Nicholas Bagley, a law professor at the University of Michigan who has watched the case closely, said he’s certain the Supreme Court will hear the case if the 5th Circuit strikes the law. But he doesn’t expect a SCOTUS review if it leaves the law in place.
“If the panel reverses, I’m not at all sure that the Supreme Court will take the case,” Bagley wrote me in an email. “It’s that goofy.”
Last week, before the judges’ names were announced, the appeals court questioned whether the Democratic-led states and the U.S. House have the right to appeal the lower-court decision striking the law. Bagley and some other legal scholars interpreted the request as boding poorly for the law’s future, while others said it was a reasonable request, my Washington Post colleague Yasmeen Abutaleb reported.
HENRY KOTULA 