Supreme Court nominee Barrett says she's 'not hostile' to ObamaCare

close

Video

Amy Coney Barrett on ObamaCare: 'I'm not hostile to the ACA'

Senators question Amy Coney Barrett on her stance on the Affordable Care Act.

Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett emphasized Tuesday during day two of her confirmation hearing that she is “not hostile” to the Affordable Care Act (ACA) as Democrats hounded her on the implications of adding her to the bench just before the high court is to consider a case on the landmark national health care law. 

Barrett said that she had critiqued only the statutory interpretations of the court’s 2012 decision to uphold the Obama-era law, not the legislation itself. 

“I think that your concern is that because I critiqued the statutory reasoning that I’m hostile to the ACA and that because I’m hostile to the ACA that I would decide a case a particular way,” Barrett said in response to a question from Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill. 

“I assure you that I am not. I am not hostile to the ACA, I’m not hostile to any statute that you pass,” she continued. 

"I haven't written about severability that I know of at all," Barrett told senators. She added that because the case is on the Supreme Court's docket "the cannons of judicial conduct would prevent me from expressing a view."

BARRETT SAYS SHE WON'T GIVE ISSUES 'THUMBS UP OR THUMBS DOWN' AS DEMS GRILL NOMINEE ON OBAMACARE, TRUMP 

Durbin and other Democrats have referred to Barrett’s academic writing on the Affordable Care Act court decision during her time as a law professor at Notre Dame as evidence that millions of Americans could lose their health care amid the COVID-19 pandemic. 

She told Durbin they could talk at a later time about the “distinctions between academic writing and judicial decision making.”

“To assume that because I critiqued the interpretation of the mandate or the phrase established by a state means that, on the entirely different question of severability, I would reach a different result just assumes that I’m hostile,” Barrett continued. 

Democrats take issue specifically with a 2017 law school article penned by Barrett criticizing the health care legislation. 

“For Justice Scalia and those who share his commitment to uphold text, the measure of a court is its fair-minded application of the rule of law, which means going where the law leads. By this measure, it is illegitimate for the Court to distort either the Constitution or a statute to achieve what it deems a preferable result,” Barrett wrote in the article. 

DEM SENATOR CALLS BARRETT A 'JUDICIAL TORPEDO' AIMED AT OBAMACARE DURING CONFIRMATION HEARING

"Chief Justice Roberts pushed the Affordable Care Act beyond its plausible meaning to save the statute," she continued. "He construed the penalty imposed on those without health insurance as a tax, which permitted him to sustain the statute as a valid exercise of the taxing power; had he treated the payment as the statute did – as a penalty – he would have had to invalidate the statute as lying beyond Congress’s commerce power."

President Trump repeatedly indicated he will nominate a judge who would rule against the ACA. The court is slated to hear oral arguments challenging the constitutionality of the ACA on Nov. 10, one week after the presidential election.

The White House-backed lawsuit was brought by a group of Republican states, spearheaded by Texas, who are arguing the individual mandate – the provision that requires Americans to purchase health insurance or pay a financial penalty – was made unconstitutional when the GOP-passed Tax Cuts and Jobs Act reduced the penalty to zero.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

The suit contends if that part of ObamaCare is invalid, so is the rest of the law.

Fox News' Megan Henney contributed to this report.