Supreme Court

The U.S. Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments Jan. 7 in cases from other parts of the country about the legality of the requirement, but it is not clear when justices will rule.

The high court’s announcement that it will hear arguments in the cases Jan. 7 comes amid rising coronavirus cases and is an extraordinarily fast timeline.

The arguments before the justices did not deal directly with the state’s ban on abortions after six weeks. Instead, they centered on the unique mechanism in the law that gives state officials no role in enforcement.

Attorney General Ashley Moody says her office respects “the ruling and authority of the court” but defended her involvement in the suit, saying “my office will always push back on any federal overreach."

The 7-2 decision threw out the challenge to the law on grounds that Texas and other objecting GOP-dominated states were not required to pay anything under the mandate provision.

Listen: On WMFE’s “Intersection,” health reporter Abe Aboraya; Florida Blue’s Tony Jenkins and Primary Care Access Network’s Anne Packham talk about the future of the law.

At least two of the court's conservative justices seemed to suggest the law should stand whether or not the individual mandate is found unconstitutional.

The case is the result of a change to the law made by Congress in 2017: reducing to zero the penalty for not having health insurance. But it was that penalty that the court ruled made the law constitutional in 2012.

Job losses caused by the pandemic are driving more people to the Obamacare marketplace. But some are concerned the Supreme Court could dismantle the law and leave them without coverage.

At issue were FDA regulations that required women seeking medication abortion to pick up the prescribed pills in person at a clinic. Doctors had cited the risk of exposing patients to the coronavirus.