United Liberty

SCOTUSblog reports that the Supreme Court has upheld the individual mandate and the rest of Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, though the “federal government’s power to terminate states’ Medicaid funds is narrowly read.” Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts explains that the individual mandate is a tax.

The decision is certainly interesting because Solicitor General Donald Verrilli argued that the individual mandate wasn’t a tax back in March. And that was an argument with which members seemed to agree.

Stay tuned for a link to the opinion and further updates.

[10:22am] SCOTUSblog notes that Roberts’ vote, not Kennedy’s, saved ObamaCare. It was 5 to 4 decision.

[10:24am] Based on what we know right now, the implication is that the Commerce Clause was not expanded as a result of the decision. But we can’t say for sure until we see the opinion of the court.

[10:26am] Remember when President Obama said the mandate wasn’t a tax.

[10:27am] The Commerce Clause is untouched by the opinion. The majority only ruled the mandate constitutional as a tax, via SCOTUSblog: “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.”

[10:49am] And here is the opinion.

[10:52am] Chief Justice Roberts: “The Commerce Clause is not a general license to regulate an individualfrom cradle to grave, simply because he will predictably engage in particular transactions.”

[10:56am] From the opinion: “Because the Commerce Clause does not support the individual mandate, iti s necessary to turn to the Government’s second argument: that the mandate may be upheld as within Congress’senumerated power to ‘lay and collect Taxes.’”

[10:58am] From the opinion: “Construing the Commerce Clause to permit Congress to regulate individuals precisely because they are doing nothing would open a new and potentially vast domain to congressional authority. Congress already possesses expansive power to regulate what people do. Upholding the Affordable Care Act under the Commerce Clause would give Congress the same license to regulate what people do not do. The Framers knew the difference between doing something and doing nothing. They gave Congress the power to regulate commerce, not to compel it. Ignoring that distinction would undermine the principle that the Federal Government is a government of limited and enumerated powers. The individual mandate thus cannot be sustained under Congress’s power to ‘regulate Commerce.’”

[11:01am] From the opinion: “[I]t is abundantly clear the Constitution does not guarantee that individuals may avoid taxation through inactivity. A capitation, after all, is a tax that everyone must pay simply for existing, and capitations are expressly contemplated by the Constitution. The Court today holds that our Constitution protects us from federal regulation under the Commerce Clause so long as we abstain from the regulated activity. But from its creation, the Constitution has made no such promise with respect to taxes.”

[11:07am] Parsing through the dissent now.

[11:12am] From the dissent: “[T]o say that the Individual Mandate merely imposes a tax is not to interpret the statute but to rewrite it. Judicial tax-writing is particularly troubling…Imposing a tax through judicial legislation inverts the constitutional scheme, and places the power to tax in the branch of government least accountable to the citizenry.”