FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:  Monday, February 26, 2018

CONTACT:  Sara Rabern (605) 773-3215 

PIERRE, S.D. – Attorney General Marty Jackley announces that South Dakota has joined 20 other State Attorneys General in a lawsuit challenging the Affordable Care Act.

“South Dakotan’s deserve more affordable health insurance than mandated Obamacare has provided.  I am joining with other State Attorneys General to challenge the federal takeover of healthcare to provide our state and South Dakotans more affordable options for healthcare,” said Jackley. “The original 5 to 4 Supreme Court decision was based not on healthcare but on Congress’ decision to tax us, and it is time to once and for all end this federal mandate to allow medical doctors more freedom to care for patients and private industry to compete for lower insurance premiums.”  

As stated in the Attorneys General’s complaint seeking declaratory and injunctive relief, “Following the enactment of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, the country is left only with Congress’s naked intent to impose an individual mandate on most Americans to buy health insurance, without the fig leaf of a tax penalty to salvage its unconstitutionality.”  

The recently enacted tax bill eliminates the tax penalty for failure to obtain health care insurance under the ACA. But in the new tax bill, Congress did not eliminate the mandate to obtain health insurance. The suit alleges that the mandate to obtain health insurance is therefore rendered unconstitutional.

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