Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/20pdf/19-840_6jfm.pdf
Page Number: 6

Cite as:  593 U. S. ____ (2021) 

3 

Opinion of the Court 

(2012).  The penalties varied with a taxpayer’s income and 
exempted,  among  others,  persons  whose  annual  incomes
fell  below  the  federal  income  tax  filing  threshold.    See 
§5000A(e) (2012).  And the Act required that those subject 
to  a  penalty  include  it  with  their  annual  tax  return.    See 
§5000A(b)(2) (2012).  In 2017, Congress amended the Act by
setting  the  amount  of  the  penalty  in  each  category  in
§5000A(c)  to  “$0,”  effective  beginning  tax  year  2019.    See 
§11081, 131 Stat. 2092.

Before Congress amended the Act, the Internal Revenue 
Service (IRS) had implemented §5000A(b) by requiring in-
dividual taxpayers to report with their federal income tax 
return  whether  they  carried  minimum  essential  coverage
(or could claim an exemption).  After Congress amended the
Act, the IRS made clear that the statute no longer requires 
taxpayers  to  report  whether  they  do,  or  do  not,  maintain
that coverage.  See IRS, Publication 5187, Tax Year 2019, 
p. 5 (“Form 1040 . . . will not have the ‘full-year health care 
coverage or exempt’ box and Form 8965, Health Coverage 
Exemptions, will no longer be used as the shared responsi-
bility payment is reduced to zero”). 

B 
In 2018, Texas and more than a dozen other States (state 
plaintiffs)  brought  this  lawsuit  against  the  Secretary  of 
Health and Human Services and the Commissioner of In-
ternal Revenue, among others.  App. 12, 34.  They sought a 
declaration  that  §5000A(a)’s  minimum  essential  coverage 
provision is unconstitutional, a finding that the rest of the 
Act  is  not  severable  from  §5000A(a),  and  an  injunction 
against  the  rest  of  the  Act’s  enforcement.  Id.,  at  61–63. 
Hurley and Nantz (individual plaintiffs) soon joined them. 
Although  nominally  defendants  to  the  suit,  the  United
States took the side of the plaintiffs.  See Brief for Federal 
Respondents  12–13  (arguing  that  the  Act  is  unconstitu-
tional).  Therefore  California,  along  with  15  other  States