The death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg is a tragedy for the country, which has lost a groundbreaking legal icon, and for the many causes she championed.

It could also be a tragedy for the millions of people who depend on the Affordable Care Act for health insurance because of a lawsuit that the Supreme Court is scheduled to hear on Nov. 10 .

The case, now called California v. Texas, comes from Republican state officials and has the backing of President Donald Trump . It alleges that the 2010 health care law known as Obamacare contains a fatal constitutional flaw, requiring the justices to wipe it off the books.

Figuring out how Ginsburgs death will affect its prospects is not easy, and legal experts that HuffPost contacted Friday night cautioned that it may take a day or two to think through the scenarios.

One is that the Affordable Care Act survives without much fuss, the program goes on as it is, and nobody loses coverage. This lawsuit is so weak that even conservative legal experts who supported previous challenges think it has no basis. Several or all conservative justices might join liberals in rejecting it.

But the lawsuit has already prevailed in two lower court cases, both times because Republican-appointed judges agreed with its rationale. And without Ginsburg, who was sure to uphold the law, the odds of the Affordable Care Act surviving go down.

That is true even if Republicans dont manage to fill her seat before the hearing. One possibility now in play is a four-four tie. If that happens, two legal experts told HuffPost, then the Affordable Care Act could become something like a zombie statute one that is unconstitutional but that continues to operate while litigation continues before lower court judges.

This should make people think again before (once again) saying that an absolutely ludicrous argument had no chance of destroying the ACA in SCOTUS, Leah Litman , a University of Michigan law professor and former Supreme Court clerk, told HuffPost.

What The Lawsuit Says

The alleged constitutional flaw in the Affordable Care Act exists because Trump signed a Republican bill in 2017 that zeroed out the financial penalty for people who didnt sign up for insurance.

That penalty, known as the individual mandate, was the subject of a celebrated 2012 case in which the Supreme Court upheld the law, with Chief Justice John Roberts joining the four liberals, on the grounds that the mandate was a constitutionally permissible tax.

The thinking behind this new lawsuit is that, with the penalty now zero, the mandate cant be a tax which means it has lost its constitutional validity, which means the whole thing has to come off the books.

To say that argument has flaws is generous. Its genuinely difficult to find a respectable legal scholar who will vouch for it. But in December 2018, it prevailed before a federal district judge , the conservative Reed OConnor, who agreed that the entire law is invalid.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit heard it next. In a 2-to-1 decision, a pair of Republican-appointed justices agreed with OConnors basic finding . But they also remanded the case back to him, with instructions to consider more carefully whether perhaps some parts of the law can stay.

At that point, the Supreme Court grabbed it, presumably to put the matter to rest once and for all. It is impossible to know which justices voted to take the case (it takes only four) or why.

What The Supreme Court Could Do

The Supreme Court has already rejected two previous challenges to the Affordable Care Act: the 2012 case and one that it heard in 2015 . Legal scholars are in wide agreement that this new case is significantly thinner than either one of those.

But Ginsburg was a vote to uphold the law both times. Without her, things become a lot more complicated. For starters, because its not clear how many justices will even be on the court for the hearing.

With Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell promising a vote on a Donald Trump nominee to replace Ginsburg, the court could be back at full strength by early November, with a new judge expanding the conservative majority to six . But that is only weeks away, which means its also possible the court would hear the case with just eight justices.

The liberal judges seem likely to uphold the ACA again, and most experts have thought Roberts would be inclined to do the same, given that he passed up opportunities to invalidate the law when faced with stronger legal arguments. Its entirely possible some of the other Republican justices would do the same in this case.