Posted on 03/04/2015 6:26:30 AM PST by SeekAndFind
On Wednesday, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in King v. Burwell, which will decide whether health insurance subsidies should be available nationwide or only in those 16 states that established exchanges. Several questions have recently emerged over the legitimacy of the plaintiffs’ case, including issues of jurisdiction and congressional intent, but there’s an even deeper flaw: The plaintiffs’ interpretation would render the statute unconstitutional.
Several of my colleagues and I made this case in an amicus brief to the Court. If the plaintiffs’ interpretation carries the day, then Obamacare has threatened states that failed to establish exchanges with virtually assured destruction of their individual insurance markets. And the Supreme Court held in the first Obamacare case that the federal government may not make that kind of extreme threat. Congress can't hold a gun to states’ heads in order to force them to implement federal policies.
This constitutional problem matters—maybe more than any other flaw in the plaintiffs’ case—because it puts the conservative justices in a bind. In general, conservative justices try to avoid second-guessing a statute’s text, even if the text leads to seemingly crazy results, and the plaintiffs have a case that the text of the Affordable Care Act compels their victory. But some conservatives on the bench, notably Chief Justice John Roberts, are also dedicated to a different and sometimes-contradictory principle: that they should not assume that Congress wrote an unconstitutional statute.
(Excerpt) Read more at newrepublic.com ...
If the chief justice wants to write law, let him run for congress. His job is to call the balls and strikes, nothing more.
United Socialists Supreme Court were instrumental in birthing baby TOTALITARIAN. It’s the crown jewel of the Roberts court.
Checks on the citizens, balances for US (United Socialists).
Whistling in the dark...by those desiring the Justices to be progressive legislators.
Roberts is not a conserative. He is a statist Traitor.
So, you agree with the title of this thread then?
New Flash Abigail! It is unconstitutional and your crap article, expressing your feeeeeeeelllllllllings won't change that fact.
But ... I feel that ... if 0bama and Pelosi authored it, it has to be constitutional.
Roberts is likely working on baking his next legal pretzel even as we prognosticate.
That article is a bunch of bovine excrement. Interpreting the words according to their clear meaning will not render the law unconstitutional, but will simply render the subsidies illegal. Congress constantly puts guns to the heads of the 50 states to encourage and discourage behavior. What immediately comes to mind is withholding of highway funds if states don’t adopt federal drunk driving standards. If that is Constitutional why can’t Congress also deny subsidies to people in states which do not play ball with Obamacare in order to encourage them to play ball?
The problem with this argument are the multiple credible sources (Gruber, Franks) who have stated that the bill was deliberately written that way to prod states into establishing there own exchanges.
So the whole presumption that Congress wouldn’t write an unconstitutional law goes out the window.
Beyond that, there’s also the “so what?” factor to this argument. The case before the Court isn’t a Constitutional one, it’s whether the law, as written, really says what it says. The Constitutional issue raised by this argument simply isn’t germane to the case, meaning that the Justices would only consider it from a political perspective.
“Congress can’t hold a gun to states’ heads in order to force them to implement federal policies.”
She must live under a rock.
If laws don’t mean what they say, then why do we have laws?
If laws don’t mean what they say, then I can do anything I want.
You are correct - it is well settled that the Court cannot rewrite a contract or statute to make it legal or enforceable. There is what is known as the “blue pencil” doctrine which holds that if the offending provision can be specifically stricken without effecting the rest of the law/contract then the court can do so. If it can’t the the entire law/contract is held unenforceable.
This is a smokescreen. The USSC will rule in favor of Obamacare because they will be told to do so.
They will uphold it due to quaking fear of media headlines blaming them for every poor sucker in South Succotash who loses his subsidized coverage and then gets sick.
While I don't disagree, my concern here is that the blackmail tentacles are so deep as to be fundamentally disturbing to anyone initially rocking the boat.
Think of how this plays out: a conservative gets elected, goes to DC, tries to make waves, is met at a bar by a man in a black jacket with a folder full of pictures, emails, web browsing history, etc. They tell the newly-elected representative to play ball, or this will all be leaked to the press. Since the press is complicit, they'll do what they're told to do.
Given the number of elected politicians, chances are they can control everyone in DC and then move on to the unelected bureaucrats, eventually controlling the entirety of the DC government leviathan we call the government. Is there not a single man or woman of substance who will stand up to these bullies and declare that they're not scared? Maybe come out before the allegations and explain that they've been blackmailed and KNOW they'll probably be "disappeared" for talking about it (a la Vince Foster).
Instead, there are thousands of little Benedict Arnolds across our government selling out the people to keep safe their secrets. None of this matters anymore, folks. The American experiment is over. Freedom lost. We're in control of nothing more than what clothes we put on our backs, and even that may not be forever. I don't see this ending well for anyone except the bureaucrats who are "playing ball."
” But some conservatives on the bench, notably Chief Justice John Roberts, are also dedicated to a different and sometimes-contradictory principle: that they should not assume that Congress wrote an unconstitutional statute.”
Such an argument precisely contradicts what the Constitution actually says:
“U.S. Constitution Article III, Section. 2. The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority;....”
Note how the Constitution says “The judicial Power shall extend to “all Cases” and not “all Cases except those in which it is alleged the Congress enacted an unconstitutional Law.”
The Supremes will rule in favor because whatever Obama had on Roberts, he still has on Roberts.
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