Does the law have to have a ‘severability’ clause to be struck down in part?
(The line item change is effectively legislation.)
As I understand the legal “dance”, that’s how things are interpreted, er, well, used to be (there’s not even any semblance of logic any more so who knows).
If Congress says in its law that it’s “all or nothing”, and if SCOTUS strikes down any point, then, yes, in theory the whole thing is nullified in a practical sense. Cuz everyone used to know that then Federal judges would then rule according to that SCOTUS “strike down”, so anything in the law could be successfully challenged. Most times, therefore, Congress would choose to be sure to indicate that it was NOT all or nothing, so they would keep the parts not struck down.
Today, in an era where the executive branch publicly states that they will not enforce laws according to their whim, Congress is more useless (except to the financial elites) than it ever was and judges legislate at their whim - all bets are off from a courtroom perspective. We live in a legally arbitrary society at this point.
Many sheeple still are not quite catching on that the financial elites are the worst war-criminal, drug lord slavers in history and that they form the top of the hierarchy of the American establishment. In effect, the worst criminals of all, criminals on a global scale, rule over our government, which is just a show put on for us sheeple.
More sheeple are catching on every day.
The first thing is to admit there’s a problem, second is to correctly identify what the problem is. We’re slowly getting there.
Actually doing something about it is quite another story, of course.
SCOTUS did not rule on the constitutionality of any part of Obamacare. But to answer your question, no, that is not always the case. It depends on the specific legal questions that the court is addressing and what remedies are available to the court.
(The line item change is effectively legislation.)
No, it isn't legislating from the bench. (Although that does happen.) It is The Court's job to rule on the specific legal questions that are presented to it. Often those questions are about a very specific provision of law. In order to have standing to sue, plaintiffs must claim a unique injury. In doing so, they have to identify, specifically how they are or will be injured.