Posted on 06/25/2015 10:25:30 AM PDT by mojito
...Worst of all for the repute of today’s decision, the Court’s reasoning is largely self-defeating. The Court predicts that making tax credits unavailable in States that do not set up their own Exchanges would cause disastrous economic consequences there. If that is so, however, wouldn’t one expect States to react by setting up their own Exchanges? And wouldn’t that outcome satisfy two of the Act’s goals rather than just one: enabling the Act’s reforms to work and promoting state involvement in the Act’s implementation? The Court protests that the very existence of a federal fallback shows that Congress expected that some States might fail to set up their own Exchanges. So it does. It does not show, however, that Congress expected the number of recalcitrant States to beparticularly large.
* * *
Faced with overwhelming confirmation that “Exchange established by the State” means what it looks like it means, the Court comes up with argument after feeble argument to support its contrary interpretation. None of its tries comes close to establishing the implausible conclusion that Congress used “by the State” to mean “by the State or not by the State.”
* * *
Today’s opinion changes the usual rules of statutory interpretation for the sake of the Affordable Care Act. That, alas, is not a novelty. In National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, 567 U. S. ___, this Court revised major components of the statute in order to save them from unconstitutionality. The Act that Congresspassed provides that every individual “shall” maintain insurance or else pay a “penalty.” This Court, however, saw that the Commerce Clause does not authorize a federal mandate to buy health insurance. So it rewrote the mandate-cum-penalty as a tax. The Act that Congress passed also requires every State to losing all Medicaid funding. This Court, however, saw that the Spending Clause does not authorize this coercive condition. So it rewrote the law to withhold only the incremental funds associated with the Medicaid expansion. Having transformed twomajor parts of the law, the Court today has turned its attention to a third. The Act that Congress passed makes tax credits available only on an “Exchange established bythe State.” This Court, however, concludes that this limitation would prevent the rest of the Act from working as well as hoped. So it rewrites the law to make tax credits available everywhere. We should start calling this law SCOTUScare.
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Perhaps the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Actwill attain the enduring status of the Social Security Act or the Taft-Hartley Act; perhaps not. But this Court’s two decisions on the Act will surely be remembered through the years. The somersaults of statutory interpretation they have performed (“penalty” means tax, “further [Medicaid] payments to the State” means only incremental Medicaid payments to the State, “established by the State”means not established by the State) will be cited by litigants endlessly, to the confusion of honest jurisprudence. And the cases will publish forever the discouraging truth that the Supreme Court of the United States favors some laws over others, and is prepared to do whatever it takesto uphold and assist its favorites.
The full opinion is given in pdf form at the link. The dissent begins on page 27.
I love Scalia and Thomas. They need to be cloned.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, —That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.—Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States
Animal Farm.
It is all rhetoric and it is ALL unconstitutional-—but so it has been since SS and the Progressive “tax” was forced on the masses (which is unconstitutional).
The Supreme Court is just an Oligarchy, Satanists who ejected the Constitution during “Justice” Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr reign——where Language and Words mean absolutely NOTHING.
Justice no longer is the Queen of Virtue and it no longer is about “Justice”—the Queen of Virtue-—it is about Totalitarianism and Marxist control of EVERYTHING.
Just Law can NOW promote Vice and unnatural, evil vile behaviors like slavery and sodomy which forces the buying and selling of human beings.........
Where is the Natural Law and God’s Law, Scalia, that is the basis of American Jurisprudence????
Warping Words and Language DESTROYS Just Law.
“.....We should start calling this law SCOTUScare.”
Scalia’s dissent captures exactly what the Court did. This POLITICAL action, as opposed to any proper judicial action to UPHOLD THE WRITTEN LAW, spells the end of judicial check-and-balance...the prime directive of the SCOTUS.
The radical left is celebrating. America continues to be torn down.
It means just the opposite. While Roberts will no doubt reap months of favorable coverage in the MSM, he has completely and ineradicably destroyed the legitimacy of the court as an independent arbiter of the law and upholder of the Constitution.
The man joins Justice Tanney as one of the most despised names in the court's history.
I wonder if and how the next Conservative Administration wil heal all the assaults on the Constitution and Law that this current rable have carried out. And as for restoring confidence in the rule of law, that will be a wonder to behold.
FWIW, ObamaCare is unconstitutional because it originated in the House despite claims that the House sent a bill to the Senate and the Senate ‘amended’ it.
Actually not. In constitutional history the Senate has been permitted to amend a house bill so much that you’d barely notice it, BUT the House bill was AT LEAST on the same subject.
The Senate amended a House bill that had was not about the affordable care act. In other words, they created it on a pretext and not in a constitutional fashion. So, it was a revenue bill that did NOT originate in the House.
You are so right.
I absolutely despise Roberts. . . and Kennedy.
That philosophy ignores the American people’s decision to give Congress “[a]ll legislative Powers” enumerated in the Constitution. Art. I, §1. They made Congress, not this Court, responsible for both making laws and mending them. This Court holds only the judicial power—the power to pronounce the law as Congress has enacted it. We lack the prerogative to repair laws that do not work out in practice, just as the people lack the ability to throw us out of office if they dislike the solutions we concoct. We must always remember, therefore, that “[o]ur task is to apply the text, not to improve upon it."
It is no longer the Supreme Court. It is the EXTREME Court!
Justice Roberts understands the adulation of the beltway media and craves it like a narcotic.
And therein lies the difference between them.
What Justice Roberts fails to understand is that without the Constitution, the Court has no purpose and falls into yet another Federal entity that serves only as a sycophant to the reigning oligarch.
I find interesting that in the same week that the Court finally strikes down one of the remnants of the Roosevelt Administration where when threatened by Packing the Court, the Court became complete subservient to the President, we see them reprise that role in deference to yet another Democrat Demagog.
I’m not sure what is more sad: that the correctness of Scalia’s interpretation is not immediately obvious on its face or that he actually had to explain it in a written opinion.
You are right. That’s a good point.
“Trying to double talk, get myself in trouble talk, catching myself in lies...”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67mjKw8gn98
IMO, the court should have ruled 9-0 that the subsidies were unlawful. This goes back to Robert’s original Obamacare ruling where he said that if the American people did not want the law then they have the ability to repeal it. The issue here was a political issue not a Constitutional issue (I understand they were ‘obliged’ to take the case due to conflicting ruling at appeals courts). If Congress wanted subsidies they could have been explicit. If SCOTUS tossed the law, Congress could have fixed it easily. What we have here is SCOTUS essentially “patching” political potholes. They will do what Congress can’t summon the energy to do. This ruling has the unintended consequence of sanctioning extreme partisanship and covering up for the very sloppy, roughshod and way in which Obamacare was passed. The law is bad in part because of how it was forced through in an almost unprecedented manner: without final editing, without reconciliation, deliberately shutting out consultation with the opposition party, and passing it through a lame duck session. And SCOTUS basically gave Congress an attaboy for it.
I’m sure there are provisions for removing incompetent or treasonous judges. They ought to be invoked.
Those who voted with the majority have serious ethical problems. They are either:
1. Purely evil and uninterested in ruling Constitutionally.
1.a. Being blackmailed or bribed to coerce their vote.
2. Insane.
3. Utterly incompetent and unqualified for their jobs.
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