The basics of the ruling
by digby
In plain English, from Scotusblog:
Amy Howe: 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.
This is just the upshot. There’s a lot in there that needs to be parsed by the legal beagles. More later as I read around the tubes.
Meanwhile, if you want to have some fun, watch Fox News this morning …
Update: Here’s Erick Erickson with a first reaction:
I’m disappointed by the decision, but not terribly surprised given I had no idea which way it’d go. I do take away a few things.
First, John Roberts’ opinion seems to clearly suggest he wants to keep the Supreme Court out of political fights and was willing to destroy his reputation with conservatives to do it.
Second, this forces everyone to deal with the issue politically. The President and Democrats did, according to the Court, impose a tax increase. Because it is a taxation issue, the GOP now, should it take back the Senate, have even more grounds to deal with the matter under reconciliation, bypassing the 60 vote filibuster threshold.
It’s a big win for the President and a bad day for freedom. But we can deal with it. It is not the end of the world, the republic, or freedom. It just means we have to fight harder.
In the meantime, following Obama’s lead on illegal aliens, I think Mitt Romney should declare that if he is President he’ll seek “prosecutorial discretion” to not go after people who don’t pay their individual mandate tax.
Update II: I’m reading this sort of analysis around the internet from a variety of people so I’m guessing this is a fairly good grasp of just how wily John Roberts is:
[T]here might be an even bigger win engineered by Roberts here. Remember your Marbury v. Madison. In that case, Chief Justice John Marshall gave President Madison what he wanted. But while giving the President what he wanted, Marshall established the right of judicial review and that ended up being a much bigger deal than Marbury’s silly appointment.
Here, let’s not forget, Roberts said that this was beyond the power of the Commerce Clause. When was the last time that happened? It’s a huge limitation on the power of the government under the Commerce Clause, and we might be seeing the ripple effects of that for years…
If this is going to be the Chief Justice’s legacy, it is a pretty good one. The talking heads are reacting to the politics of it, but for the Court, this is all about legitimacy. It’s a legitimacy that the Court lost with Bush v. Gore. But now we can clearly say that Bush v. Gore was “the other guy.” That was the Rehnquist Court. And Rehnquist isn’t here anymore.
This is the Roberts Court. And here, we’ve got a pro-business Court that interprets laws as constitutional when it can. Roberts found a way to keep this law in-bounds — without abandoning his conservative principles on the expansion of federal power. The conservatives “disappointed” with Roberts today are being silly and can’t see the long game here. The Commerce Clause has been limited AND the Court looks non-partisan. Beat that with a stick.
I’m not sure Bush vs Gore goes in the dustbin. But I am willing to say that John Roberts seems to care more about the legitimacy of the Court than William Rhenquist did. And that’s, frankly, a welcome surprise. I’m not crazy about the idea of an unelected tribunal being seen by the people as the only legitimate branch of government, but I suppose it’s better than no branch of government having any legitimacy.
If this really is yet more whittling down of the Commerce Clause that’s probably going to be a problem down the road. On health care, though, I have no problems calling the mandate a “tax.” It is. (Of course, if you’re going to be called a tax and spender anyway, why not have single payer…)
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