This is flatly false. The ACA required people to purchase insurance OR to pay a tax penalty. Individuals were NOT required to purchase insurance. They are not required now to pay a penalty, after the idiot tax bill reduced the tax penalty to zero. Given that the mandate was instituted to keep the system financially viable, and the fact that it has remained viable without the mandate, the mandate has been rendered moot. A moot feature of a law is clearly "severable" from the law without forcing the entire law, which IS constitutional, to fall. In any case the entire marketplace was a small part of the ACA, it defies logic to allow a minor feature of a portion of a law, a feature that can be easily severed from that portion, to cause the entire law to fall.