Trump seeks ruling in case striking down 'Obamacare'

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The Trump administration and several Republican-led states faced a midnight Wednesday deadline for filing papers with a federal appeals panel reviewing a lower court ruling that former President Barack Obama's health care law is unconstitutional.

The administration switched its stance in the case, recently telling the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that it believes the Affordable Care Act should be struck down completely. Earlier, the administration had argued that only certain key parts of the law, such as protections for people with pre-existing medical conditions, should be invalidated.

The case was filed by Texas and more than a dozen Republican-led states. U.S. District Judge Reed O'Connor in Fort Worth, Texas, ruled late last year that the health law's requirement that people have insurance was rendered unconstitutional when Congress, in the 2017 tax law, eliminated an unpopular penalty for those remaining uninsured. Without enforcement of this individual mandate, the whole law cannot stand, he concluded.

California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, 15 other state attorneys general and the U.S. House of Representatives appealed to the 5th Circuit. They argued that zeroing out the penalty does not make the individual mandate unconstitutional and that, even if it did, the rest of the law remains legally viable. They also challenged the ability of those who filed the original lawsuit to bring such a legal challenge.

If the ruling is allowed to stand, more than 20 million Americans would be at risk of losing their health insurance, re-igniting a winning political issue for Democrats heading into the 2020 elections. President Donald Trump, who never produced a health insurance plan to replace "Obamacare," is now promising one after the elections.

Oral arguments in the case are expected in...