Dechert recently filed three amicus briefs in the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf a group of over one hundred economists (including two Nobel laureates and numerous former senior government officials) in support of the States and private parties challenging the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. In striking down the individual mandate, the Eleventh Circuit relied upon a Dechert amicus brief filed on behalf of the same economists, and Dechert's amicus briefs at the Supreme Court have been closely followed both by court watchers and the parties to the landmark constitutional challenge. Before the Supreme Court, Dechert has filed briefs on the key question whether the individual mandate provision is unconstitutional, as well as on the questions whether the individual mandate is severable from the rest of the Act and whether the Act's Medicaid expansion is unconstitutionally coercive of the States.
The individual mandate brief deconstructs the economic data relied upon by the U.S. Government to show that the individual mandate provision cannot rationally be justified as an exercise of the federal power to regulate interstate commerce. Dechert attorneys Steven G. Bradbury, Steven A. Engel (counsel of record), Michael H. Park and Elisa T. Wiygul filed the brief.
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