During his confirmation hearings he frequently talked about showing deference to the other branches so this is only a mild surprise to me. I have actually been more surprised by how radical he has been with opinions like Citizens United that overturned precedent after he had made Stari Decisis a mantra. Just heard that all House Republicans are going into a closed door meeting figuring out how to respond.
They were trying to be "first." The initial reading made it sound like the mandate was being struck down.
The Court holds that the mandate violates the Commerce Clause, but that doesn't matter b/c there are five votes for the mandate to be constitutional under the taxing power.
I think this is a wash since basically it leaves things the same as they were the past two years. As much as it might mobilize the Right that is probably offset by avoiding tagging Obama with a failure of his signature issue.
It means the law stands as written. Is considered a tax. Congress will rework some of it on the medicaid side. Republicans will run a ton of ads calling Obama a tax raiser. (lol)
Justice Ginsburg makes clear that the vote is 5-4 on sustaining the mandate as a form of tax. Her opinion, for herself and Sotomayor, Breyer and Kagan, joins the key section of Roberts opinion on that point. She would go further and uphold the mandate under the Commerce Clause, which Roberts wouldn't. Her opinion on Commerce does not control.
I bet they do. How funny that would be, since virtually everybody's taxes went down during Obama's term.
last few posts are c/p from scotusblog. more: Kennedy says: "In our view, the entire Act before us is invalid in its entirety."
It took them awhile to update their site. I could see in my mind the web content editor just sitting their with his face in his hands.
Well folks, go buy your pharma & other medical industry stocks. This guarantees massive profits for that industry as the baby boomers retire/get old.
Expansion of Medicaid is constitutional (key), but States can't be stripped of funds for not complying with expansion provisions.
So stunning. If the right wing fanatical activist who is hell bent on destroying America and handing it over to the corporations John Roberts had ruled the way everyone knew he would since he is bought and paid for by the evil republican party, the law would be struck down entirely.
In Plain English: The Affordable Care Act, including its individual mandate that virtually all Americans buy health insurance, is constitutional. There were not five votes to uphold it on the ground that Congress could use its power to regulate commerce between the states to require everyone to buy health insurance. However, five Justices agreed that the penalty that someone must pay if he refuses to buy insurance is a kind of tax that Congress can impose using its taxing power. That is all that matters. Because the mandate survives, the Court did not need to decide what other parts of the statute were constitutional, except for a provision that required states to comply with new eligibility requirements for Medicaid or risk losing their funding. On that question, the Court held that the provision is constitutional as long as states would only lose new funds if they didn't comply with the new requirements, rather than all of their funding.
Justice Roberts will always be tied to Obama. Remember, How Roberts fumbled the Oath of Office swear in (Nerves) and had to have Obama redo it to make sure it was legal. I think he may have a personnel connection with Obama.
