From SCOTUSBlog
10:08
Amy Howe: The individual mandate survives as a tax.
10:09
Amy Howe: It's very complicated, so we're still figuring it out.
10:10
Kali: We are still here. Don't worry.
10:10
Tom: So the mandate is constitutional. Chief Justice Roberts joins the left of the Court.
7:14 AM PT: 10:11
Amy Howe: The Medicaid provision is limited but not invalidated.
10:13
Tom: The bottom line: the entire ACA is upheld, with the exception that the federal government's power to terminate states' Medicaid funds is narrowly read.
7:18 AM PT: 10:15
Tom: We're still here; taking a deeper dive into the opinion. Back soon.
10:15
Tom: Link to the opinion isn't up yet.
10:15
Tom: Chief Justice Roberts' vote saved the ACA.
7:22 AM PT: 10:18
Amy Howe: The money quote from the section on the mandate: Our precedent demonstrates that Congress had the power to impose the exaction in Section 5000A under the taxing power, and that Section 5000A need not be read to do more than impose a tax. This is sufficient to sustain it.
10:20
Amy Howe: The court reinforces that individuals can simply refuse to pay the tax and not comply with the mandate.
10:21
Tom: We do not have the opinion.
10:21
Amy Howe: On the Medicaid issue, a majority of the Court holds that the Medicaid expansion is constitutional but that it w/b unconstitutional for the federal government to withhold Medicaid funds for non-compliance with the expansion provisions.
10:22
Lyle: The key comment on salvaging the Medicaid expansion is this (from Roberts): "Nothing in our opinion precludes Congress from offering funds under the ACA to expand the availability of health care, and requiring that states accepting such funds comply with the conditions on their use. What Congress is not free to do is to penalize States that choose not to participate in that new program by taking away their existing Medicaid funding." (p. 55)
7:25 AM PT: 10:22
Amy Howe: To be clear, what we are typing here are excerpts from the opinion or paraphrasing thereof. Not predictions anymore.
10:22
Tom: 866,000 liveblog readers.
10:23
Amy Howe: The critical detail is that you cannot take away the existing Medicaid funds.
10:23
Amy Howe: The Court does not reach severability issues, having upheld the mandate 5-4.
10:24
Lyle: To readers of the Roberts opinion, a caution: It is the opinion of the Court through the top of p. 44; the balance is labeled as, and is, Roberts speaking for himself.
10:24
Amy Howe: Another way to think about Medicaid: the Constitution requires that states have a choice about whether to participate in the expansion of eligibility; if they decide not to, they can continue to receive funds for the rest of the program.
10:24
Tom: Apologies - you can't refuse to pay the tax; typo. The only effect of not complying with the mandate is that you pay the tax.
7:30 AM PT: 10:25
Amy Howe: 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.
10:26
Amy Howe: The Court holds that the Anti-Injunction Act doesn't apply because the label "tax" is not controlling.
10:26
Lyle: 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.
10:27
Lyle: Kennedy is reading from the dissent.
10:28
Lyle: Justice Ginsburg would uphold Medicaid just as Congress wrote it. That, too, is not controlling.
10:28
Lyle: In opening his statement in dissent, Kennedy says: "In our view, the entire Act before us is invalid in its entirety."
What a surprise! Not
7:36 AM PT: 10:31
Tom: We're still here. Getting deeper into the weeds. Plain English coming momentarily.
10:32
Tom: The opinion is still not available electronically.
10:32
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.
10:33
Tom: We're checking on whether the Court is still reading.
10:34
Amy Howe: Yes, to answer a common question, the whole ACA is constitutional, so the provision requiring insurers to cover young adults until they are 26 survives as well.
7:43 AM PT: 10:35
Lyle: Kennedy still reading from dissent.
10:35
Amy Howe: The Justices are still reading from their opinions in the courtroom. We will get more info on who is reading what when we can from Lyle at the Court.
10:36
Amy Howe: The ACA is the acronym for Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act -- the health care bill, also known as Obamacare.
10:37
Kali: The opinion in First American Financial v. Edwards is now on the Court's website. http://www.supremecourt.gov/...
10:38
Kali: Here is the opinion in the health care cases: http://www.supremecourt.gov/...
10:38
Lyle: Kennedy is finished reading from dissent. Ginsburg now reading from her opinion, which helps make the majority but not necessarily in agreement with Chief's reasoning.
10:40
Lyle: Among other comments, Ginsburg bench statement says that "seven members of theCourt...buy the argument that prospective withholding of anticipated funds exceeds Congress' spending power."
10:41
Lyle: The remedy, Ginsburg says, is "to bar the withholding found impermissible, not to scrap the expansion altogether." There are five votes for that.
7:48 AM PT: 10:46
Tom: We are still here. Lyle, Kevin, Amy and Tejinder are reading the opinions and we will have more analysis for you shortly. We haven't crashed (!!!) and we will be back with more soon. Stay with us.
10:48
Lyle: For readers of the opinion, a quick look at pp. 31 and 32 of Roberts' opinion tells you why the Court is sustaining as a tax measure.
7:51 AM PT: 10:50
Lyle: Essentially, a majority of the Court has accepted the Administration's backup argument that, as Roberts put it, "the mandate can be regarded as establishing a condition -- not owning health insurance -- that triggers a tax -- the required payment to IRS." Actually, this was the Administration's second backup argument: first argument was Commerce Clause, second was Necessary and Proper Clause, and third was as a tax. The third argument won.
7:54 AM PT: 10:52
Lyle: The rejection of the Commerce Clause and Nec. and Proper Clause should be understood as a major blow to Congress's authority to pass social welfare laws. Using the tax code -- especially in the current political environment -- to promote social welfare is going to be a very chancy proposition.
10:53
Lyle: Interesting, at least to scholars, that while the mandate and its attached penalty are a tax for purposes of its constitutionality, but not for the Anti-Injunction Act. If it were a tax for AIA purposes, this case would not have been decided re the mandate.
8:00 AM PT: 10:55
Lyle: For all of those who second-guessed the Solicitor General's defense of ACA, it might be worth noting that the tax defense of the mandate was, indeed, an argument that the government lawyer did advance.
10:56
Amy Howe: Take a quick look at Footnote 11, which is on page 44 of the slip opinion: Those subject to the individual mandate may lawfully forgo health insurance and pay higher taxes, or buy health insurance and pay lower taxes. The only thing that they may not lawfully do is buy health insurance and not pay the resulting tax.
10:57
Tom: I dissent from Lyle's view that the Commerce Clause ruling is a major blow to social welfare legislation. I think that piece of the decision will be read pretty narrowly.
10:59
Lyle: The Court has now recessed.
10:59
Amy Howe: By the way, the opinions collectively are a monster. The Chief's opinion is 59 pages, Justice Ginsburg's opinion is 61 pages, the four dissenters are 65 pages, followed by a short two-pager from Justice Thomas. You do the math.
All done - Court is in recess