It’s Official! The Trump administration wants the Affordable Care Act gone. It filed a legal document in the Supreme Court, agreeing with the states that claim the individual mandate requiring the uninsured to buy health coverage or pay a penalty tax is now invalid because the fine for noncompliance is now zero. It also argues that the individual mandate can’t be served from the rest of Obamacare, saying the entire Affordable Care Act thus must fall with the individual mandate. Oral arguments in the case will take place at the high court in late 2020 or 2021.

Trump administration easings to the contraceptive mandate survive a legal challenge. Obamacare generally requires employer health insurance plans to offer no-cost coverage for contraceptives. The Obama administration provided an accommodation process for some employers who object to the mandate on religious grounds. President Trump went further by issuing regulations in 2017 that expanded the class of faith-based exemptions and created new exceptions for employers with moral objections. Two states claimed the 2017 regs were invalid, but the Supreme Court upheld the rules (Little Sisters of the poor v. Penn).