if the payments were assured. U.S. District Judge Rosemary M. Collyer ruled that the cost-sharing program was unconstitutional for spending money that had not been appropriated, but concluded that Congress had in fact authorized that program to be created. The judge also found that Congress had provided authority to cover the spending for the tax credits to consumers who use them to help afford health coverage. The judge enjoined further cost-sharing payments, but stayed the order pending appeal. The case ended in a settlement before the Circuit Court. Texas et al. v. United States of America et al. Texas and nineteen other states filed a civil suit in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas in February 2018, arguing that with the passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, which eliminated the tax for not having health insurance, the individual mandate no longer had a constitutional basis and thus the entire PPACA was no longer constitutional. The Department of Justice said it would no longer defend PPACA in court, but seventeen states led by California stepped in to do so. District Judge Reed O'Connor of Texas ruled for the plaintiffs on December 14, 2018, stating that the "Individual Mandate can no longer be fairly read as an exercise of Congress's Tax Power and is still impermissible under the Interstate Commerce Clause—meaning the Individual Mandate is unconstitutional." He then further reasoned that the individual mandate is an essential part of the entire law, and thus was not severable, making the entire law unconstitutional. Judge O'Connor's decision regarding severability turned on several passages from the Congressional debate that focused on the importance of the mandate. While he ruled the law unconstitutional, he did not overturn the law. The intervening states appealed the decision to the Fifth Circuit. These states argued that Congress's change in the tax was only reducing the amount of the tax, and that Congress had the power to write a stronger law to this end. O'Connor stayed his decision pending the appeal. The Fifth Circuit heard the appeal on July 9, 2019; in the interim, the U.S. Department of Justice joined with Republican states to argue that the PPACA was unconstitutional, while the Democratic states were joined by the Democrat-controlled U.S. House of Representatives. In addition to the questions on PPACA, an additional question on standing was addressed, as the Republican plaintiffs challenged whether the Democratic states had standing to defend PPACA. In December of 2019, the Fifth Circuit agreed that the individual mandate was unconstitutional. It did not, however, agree that the entire law should be voided. Instead, it remanded the case to the District Court for reconsideration of that question. It is expected that this case will eventually return to the Supreme Court, but the effect of the remand was that there would probably be no Supreme Court decision before the 2020 elections. Democrats, pointing out that the effect of invalidating the entire law would be to remove popular provisions such as the protection for pre-existing conditions, and that the Republicans had still not offered any replacement plan, envisioned the Republican attack on the PPACA as an important issue for the 2020 elections. Non-cooperation Officials in Texas, Florida, Alabama, Wyoming, Arizona, Oklahoma and Missouri opposed those elements over which they had discretion. For example, Missouri declined to expand Medicaid or establish a health insurance marketplace engaging in active non-cooperation, enacting a statute forbidding any state or local official to render any aid not specifically required by federal law. Other Republicans discouraged efforts to advertise the law's benefits. Some conservative political