Supreme Court hearings conclude for Judge Barrett

In her third and final day of confirmation hearings for the Supreme Court, Judge Amy Coney Barrett on Wednesday suggested that the Affordable Care Act might be able to withstand a challenge from the Trump administration.

Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, invited Barrett to describe what is known as the severability doctrine.

"What it means," she said, "is if you have a statute — and the Affordable Care Act is obviously a very long statute — if there is one provision within the statute that is unconstitutional, the question is whether that one section can simply be rendered null and excised from the statute."

She told the committee that judges' "presumption" should "always" be that the rest of a law can stand even when a key portion is repealed — a concept known as "severability''.

"The presumption is always in favor of severability," she said.

Graham's question and the answer Barrett gave him appeared to be an effort by Graham to prove that the healthcare law – also known as Obamacare – wasn't in real danger next month and that Barrett's presence on the court wouldn't alter the law.

But Democrats have asserted that Barrett would side with the Justice Department to invalidate the 2010 law.

The Trump administration is arguing that because Congress repealed the individual mandate as part of the act that the rest of the law should be scrapped.

Barrett later said that judges should never seek "to undermine the policy that Congress enacted".

She said that if confirmed she wouldn't have any preconceived plans on how she would view the Affordable Care Act (ACA) when it goes before the high court next month.

The Trump administration's effort to throw out the ACA is set to reach the Supreme Court with oral arguments to begin on Nov 10. The Judiciary Committee panel is expected to vote on her nomination on Oct 22. Barrett is expected to be confirmed to the high court well before Nov 10.

If the lawsuit succeeds, roughly 20 million people would lose health insurance, and popular protections for people with pre-existing conditions would be thrown out, according to an estimate by the Urban Institute, a nonprofit research organization.

Senator Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota, noted that for years President Donald Trump has made clear his "obsession to repeal Obamacare". She highlighted the timing of a legal journal article that Barrett wrote in January 2017, the month Trump took office.

That article criticized Chief Justice John Roberts for pushing "the Affordable Care Act beyond its plausible meaning to save the statute" in a 2012 ruling.

Klobuchar asked Barrett whether she was aware at the time of that writing that the president was set on repealing the ACA and asked whether the federal appeals judge was aware that the president aimed to nominate judges to the court who would overturn the law.

"I think that the Republicans have kind of made that clear. It's just been part of the public discourse," Barrett said. "All these questions, you're suggesting that I have animus or that I cut a deal with the president and I was very clear yesterday that, that isn't what happened."

She said that she was "aware that (Trump) has criticized the Affordable Care Act" but her journal article wasn't a message for the president.

"I want to stress, I have no animus to or agenda for the Affordable Care Act so to the extent you're suggesting this was like an open letter to President Trump. It was not," she said.

In her three days of testimony, Barrett has avoided directly answering many questions on her views about controversial issues, citing a common ethical practice to not answer questions about issues that could come before the court.

She has declined to say how she would vote if a challenge to Roe vs Wade — the 1973 decision that legalized abortion nationwide — came before the court.

On Wednesday, a group of 64 state prosecutors and attorneys general released a statement saying they won't enforce laws restricting abortion, even if Roe vs Wade is reversed with Barrett on the Supreme Court.

Democrats on Wednesday again asked Barrett whether the president has the authority to unilaterally delay the election on Nov 3. Only Congress has that authority, but Barrett declined to say so explicitly, citing her refusal to engage in legal hypotheticals.

In one of the only discussions of immigration to arise during the confirmation hearings, Barrett declined to say whether she thought it was wrong to separate migrant children from their parents to deter immigration to the United States.