Senator Collins has helped Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump transform the federal judiciary by packing it with right wing judges who put Mainers at risk. This week, Maine Democrats will highlight a few of the extreme right wing nominees whom Collins helped confirm to the federal bench.
In 2018, Senator Susan Collins voted to confirm Kurt Engelhardt to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Shortly after being confirmed, Engelhardt issued a ruling that threatened to repeal the entire ACA and its protections for people with preexisting conditions.
In Texas v. United States, Engelhardt ruled that the ACA’s individual mandate was unconstitutional. The opinion also suggested that the ACA was a fraud, and sent the case back to a lower court to decide if the entire ACA is unconstitutional. That case has now advanced all the way to the Supreme Court, where the Trump administration is arguing that the entire law, including protections for people with preexisting conditions, should be struck down.
Voting to confirm Engelhardt isn’t the only way that Senator Collins has enabled the legal assault on the ACA. She also cast a decisive vote for the GOP tax bill which gutted the individual mandate, and sparked the lawsuit to eliminate the health care law. Because of Senator Collins’ votes to confirm Englehardt and pass the tax bill, in less than a month the Supreme Court will be hearing arguments in a case that could result in nearly 100,000 Mainers losing their health insurance.
“Senator Collins has played a key role in the Republicans’ efforts to dismantle the Affordable Care Act through the courts,” said Maine Democratic Party Chair Kathleen Marra. “Her votes for Judge Kurt Engelhardt and the GOP tax bill have paved the way for Republicans to gut protections for pre-existing conditions and rip away health insurance from nearly 100,000 Mainers. Maine needs a Senator who always fights for our health care, not one who paves the way for lawsuits to take it away.”
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