SCOTUS: ObamaCare Decision

http://www.scotusblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/Final-Stats-OT09-070710-15.pdf

http://www.communityrights.org/thomasops.pdf

 

It is not inaccurate to say they don't do it very often. They don't. I never said that they don't do it ever.

And it's not going to be upheld under the commerce clause. It's going to be upheld under Congress's enumerated taxing power.

 

5-4 overturned. And if all they do is take out the mandate, the rest of the law becomes fiscal suicide.

 

I believe it will be upheld 5-4, Kennedy as the swing. Not a particularly bold prediction, I know, but that's what I expect. The individual mandate will be upheld as falling within Congress' taxing authority.

 

I'll back this guess.

 

Forcing someone to pay a tax to the government and forcing someone to buy a service from a private company are not the same thing. If Congress wants to pass a tax increase of X and take X and buy everyone insurance, well, they could do that. But that's not what they did.

 

This.

 

I'd be very surprised if the decision comes tomorrow; there are several cases from earlier in the term that haven't been decided yet, and I'd expect the Justices to knock those out before putting the finishing touches on the healthcare case.

It should be 8-1 to uphold, but I'll predict a splintered 5-4 or 6-3 vote to uphold. The four liberals will find the mandate easily constitutional under the Court's Commerce Clause precedents. Kennedy will, in typical Kennedy fashion, create some mushy, ill-defined new test for government mandates -- requiring more than a mere rational basis, even though this is just economic legislation -- but find that the mandate in this case stands up to heightened scrutiny, given the unique nature of the market for health insurance. Maybe, just maybe, Roberts writes his own opinion concurring in the judgment.

 

Prediction?

Pain.

 

I disagree with your predicted outcome, but I will say that both this and the Arizona decision really need to be 6-3 in some direction or other just to get us off the dime on these 5-4 decisions that both sides can interminably jawbone as being "partisan." If that means the decisions need to be narrow to get to 6-3, so be it.

 

5-4 to junk the entire piece of legislation, forcing a do-over by Congress (this one or the next one)