The Repeal of Obamacare/ACA: Step-bystep, Inch-by-inch

[Ann_Hedonia]

I read the opinion myself and I saw it differently. I posted this in another thread a few days ago.

@Ann_Hedonia

The below is my non-lawyer opinion based on reading the actual SC opinions.
The way I read it, the reason for denying “standing” was that the underlying argument — the idea that the state or any individual suffered damages caused by the law change, which eliminated the penalty for not buying insurance- was ridiculous. Ridiculous because the very idea that eliminating the penalty for not buying insurance would cause more people to buy insurance (which the states might have to partially subsidize) was completely counterintuitive and absurd. And stupid.

It didn’t seem like that much of a dodge to me, frankly — the reason for lawsuits is to redress an injury and the Supremes majority seemed to want to remind everyone that you can’t just ask the Supremes to declare something unconstitutional just so you can run around saying “this is unconstitutional”. They said as much in the ruling.

It seems like a handy precedent to set, one that might come in handy in the future. I’m not too bothered by their failure to rule on the constitutionality of the $0 mandate, that’s not a core liberal issue by any means- in fact, it was a piece of Republican performance art - let’s make an unconstitutional change to the law, then take it through the court system to get the whole thing thrown out. I’m glad they basically rejected the scheme instead of ruling on the $0 mandate.

Usually, I think that refusing to rule on standing is a bit of a cop-out, but I don’t agree in this case. I think they took an important stand against political theatre.

The minority opinion basically came down to “I don’t like this law yet I’ve had to vote not to kill it twice already, I’m done with “rescuing” it (rescuing it from destruction by frivolous lawsuit, I guess). The minority does think the law itself is unconstitutional because it damages red states by requiring them to spend some of their own money on poor people - which is an interpretation that wouldn’t bode well for Medicaid or public education,BTW.

Thomas voted with the majority but signed on to part of the Alito rant that masqueraded as a legal opinion - I assume he did this, at least in part, so his Q-crazed wife wouldn’t beat him up.

I think the majority shot down what was basically a political stunt, and set some precedent that might help shoot down similar stunts in the future.

The way I read it, the majority opinion assumed severability throughout their ruling by ONLY considering the opposing viewpoints in light of the allegedly unconstitutional change to law, not the entirety of the law. Basically, the argument seemed to come down to — “Eliminating the enforcement of the penalty hasn’t damaged anyone and has absolutely no potential to damage anyone ever, we only hear REAL cases and controversies. Go away”.

I would love to know if I’m reading this wrong or if I missed something (any lawyers want to weigh in?), but this seemed like a pretty great outcome to me. The majority opinion is dryly snarky in places, at one point referring to the plaintiff’s “novel alternative legal theory”.

19-840_6jfm.pdf

Now, I do think the Supremes punted a little bit on the Philadelphia foster care case, but I found the punt itself interesting. I’m wondering if that was the court pushing back on the attempts to politicize everything, and maybe they were trying to show some unity by coming up with a unanimous decision on what had the potential to be a controversial case.