SCOTUS rules that no matter how a law is written, there will always be a judge to decide what is in our own best interest.
Chief Justice John Roberts, who was the key vote in 2012, again voted with his liberal colleagues in support of the law. Justice Anthony Kennedy, a dissenter in 2012, was part of the majority on Thursday.
“Congress passed the Affordable Care Act to improve health insurance markets, not to destroy them,” Roberts wrote in the majority opinion.
Roberts has turned intentionalism on its head. The excuse of all authoritarians and totalitarians is that they only have the Best.of.Intentions as they obfuscate, spin, work behind closed doors and outright lie to get their way.
Restricting subsidies (aka Other People’s Money) to State Exchanges was not only plainly written in the legislation, ObamaCare’s architect, Jonathan Gruber was quite clear about the intention behind the restrictive language.
Roberts not only rewrites the plain language of ObamaCare, he even rewrites the intention.
Somewhere, Jonathan Gruber is laughing his ass off https://t.co/83I455hF9m pic.twitter.com/gHWikyx7FK
— Legal Insurrection (@LegInsurrection) June 25, 2015
Meanwhile, Obama is being his usual small and bitter self.
FUBAR and fascism all the way down.
You can’t spell SCOTUScare without “scare.”
[…] Darleen Click […]
I heard about this while I was at work. I work for a very large player in the healthcare industry. I’m sure they were elated.
I believe I said something aloud about fascism but I’m not sure if anyone heard me.
John Roberts is not even bothering to hide his contempt for The Constitution and The Rule Of Law any longer.
He is a Despot, changing the meaning of Laws for the sake of the political whims of the moments, by any means necessary.
200 hundred years ago, we could all have left in protest and moved to the United States. Today there is no where to go to.
Faster Elon, faster.
If anyone’s interested: I’ve post excerpts from the Scalia Dissent, along with some running commentary and Roberts-induced snark:
http://wp.me/pzR3k-6HH #SCOTUScare cc:
SCOTUS has “fixed” it twice now. What they “fixed” was put into the law to begin with in order to get the ACA to pass the Congress and for the CBO to give it a good score. The law that SCOTUS’s “fixes” has given us now would not have been passed and would have flunked the CBO score*.
Congress’s role going forward now will be to cobble together any old thing that they can get the votes to pass and then the Executive will interpret it as whatever strikes their collective fancy on a given day with SCOTUS there as the backstop to affirm what they have done as the proper way to view and define the “law.”
*Gruber’s job was to make sure that what was there would score higher with the CBO than any other option that would or could be brought up by opponents. He was vital because he wrote the program model that CBO used and so would know all the quirks in the model and just how to fool the CBO scorers.
At least that is one version of the “saga of Gruber.” I’m more of the mind that his program was designed from the beginning to favor as “best” just what the Left wanted and that he was there to make sure it all went smoothly and to be the glib expert who could snow-job any who questioned any part of the ACA that was considered essential by Obama and Co.
I’d have more respect for Roberts if his interpretive “key” was based on the reading of chicken livers and goat intestines
while stoned on quaaludes, peyote, hashish, LSD and mescaline.
On a more serious note, they only way Obama’s wilfully unfaithful execution of the laws* (e.g. executive amnesty) is illegal is if “interpretation” is a game only the black robes can play.
*failure to execute is more like it
[…] Geller: Ramadan In China – At Least 18 Killed In Jihadi Attack On Police HQ Protein Wisdom: The Rule Of Law Is Dead, Long Live The Rule Of Philosopher Kings Shot In The Dark: Hipster Gets Vapors, Throws Snit STUMP: Public Pensions – Go Tell The […]
CJ Roberts today, in dissent: “But this Court is not a legislature.”
Ha! And who will say the man has no sense of humor?
And in contrast, see J. Scalia’s mocking scoff: ” The Supreme Court of the United States has descended from the disciplined legal reasoning of John Marshall and Joseph Story to the mystical aphorisms of the fortune cookie.”
5-4 , 5-4 Your vote is out the door!
We pick pick pick pick pick pick through
the law’s intent that’s what we do
To show show show show show show show
What the law law law was SUPPOSED to do
It aint no trick
We flip our bic
And we use our flame
‘Till the words un-stick
In the Line! (Echo: In the lines)
LOUDER: IN THE LINES(echo: IN THE LINES)
Where a million meanings
Shhhiiinnnneee (shine)
We pick pick pick pick pick pick through
From early mornin’ til’ a month or two
We pick pick pick pick pick pick through
Everything in sight
We take our tiiime
On the Federal diiiiiime
There’s thousands of words to be stretched and tore
And We don’t care what we stretch them for
PICK PICK PICK PICK PICK PICK PICK
Robert’s Sings in falsetto: 5-4, 5-4, 5-4, 5-4, Five-Fooooour!:: 5! 4! 5! 4!
No we don’t need no more
Whistles: do do do do dodododo
5-4 5-4 5-4 5-4 5-4
Can unlock any door!
5-4!
Whistles:
Pen-al-ty or tax? Pen-al-ty or tax? State or states? State or States?
Swap dissents, until the law’s well bent!———
5-4
5-4
5-4
…..
With your deep love of original intent, I would have thought you’d be celebrating this decision. Clearly the ACA was written with the intent that subsidies are available through state or federal exchanges.
Clearly the ACA was written with the intent that subsidies are available through state or federal exchanges.
Except for one thing: the ACA doesn’t say that. In fact, it specifically limits subsidies to those exchanges established by the States (plural), and defines “State” as “one of the 50 States and the District of Colombia”. Several times.
Gruber (you know, the MIT guy who helped create the law?) actually says that it was written that way to act as an incentive to the States to establish their own exchanges. It was specifically written that way in order to get enough Democrats to vote for it (since not a single Republican voted in favor of passage).
Further, it doesn’t matter what the INTENT might have been, it matters what the law says. Judges are supposed to look at the text of the law rather than what might have been in the hearts and minds of those crafting the law. Remember “We have to pass the law to see what is in it”? Well, that’s one of the things that is actually in the law. There is a reason why Congress defined the word that way.
But SCOTUS has just ignored black-letter – not to mention the intent of the incentive AND the definitions – in order to rewrite the law. When it collapses the economy, that will also have been one of the intents, in order to force single-payer.
You might want to check in with Jeff on that. He’s spent decades saying the opposite.
No, he has been arguing specifically AGAINST what the SCOTUS just did, others assigning intent to the speaker/writer after the fact, regardless of the words used and the definitions thereof.
You always cross at the red?
Go read this: https://proteinwisdom.com/?p=30251
You mean this part: “Writing the text yourself, however — that is, supplying the marks with their signifieds by way of your own intent, without concern for the intent of the authors who provided you with signs that you are willfully choosing to ignore — is not interpretation, in the way we understand it”?
Because that is exactly what the Court just did, in supplying new intent, regardless of the specific meanings of the words supplied, and what the authors meant by using (and defining) those words.
Sounds like he is arguing against it to me, but you’re an idiot and probably think otherwise.
Miley can’t read, just croaks like a frog,
Friday Fiction: 4 Word Challenge [Darleen Click]
3 floors up.
Right across from Free Kidneys.
Laugh?
I thought I’d dialysis.
Woot!
Congress intended for the subsidies to be available regardless of state or federal exchange.
Original intent is for constitutional analysis not, legislative analysis.
Congress intended for the subsidies to be available regardless of state or federal exchange.
If that was the case, then why did they specifically limit those subsidies to those exchanges created only by the States? It doesn’t matter what YOU SAY they might have intended, it only matters what they wrote down. Their intent can only be determined by what the law actually says, not what they claim after the fact. (Watch the video of the man who actually created that particular incentive, up above, to see for yourself.) Congress defined the word ‘States’ in such a way as to specifically exclude the Federal Government exchanges (multiple times), and specifically said that subsidies are ONLY for those exchanges created by the States.
If Congress had wanted to say what you claim they are now saying, they could have easily done so, but they not only didn’t say that, they specifically and explicitly said the exact opposite.
The Courts are acting as if Congress had just passed a law which said “We want to improve health care” and gotten it signed by Obama, leaving it up to the Executive and Judicial Branches to figure out the best ways to do it. That’s not how our system works, nor is it what happened.
The fine art of finding a loophole in a law may now be dead.
palaeomerus says June 26, 2015 at 11:41 am
Miley can’t read, just croaks like a frog
Or toots like a sphincter.
Anyway, between the “Supreme 6” resurrecting the “disparate impact” lie as proof of actual discrimination, the Rule Of The Anus overriding federalism, and the declaring that “this provision is for state exchanges only” doesn’t mean what it obviously did mean, we might as well go pack it in.
miley
SCOTUS rewrote the intent. Clearly. You can’t get around that. And they did it specifically to “save” ObamaCare based on a “structural intent” to “make healthcare better”
which is bullshit .. both by what a judge is supposed to do
e.g. Appellate Courts are to never weigh the facts of a case because the JURY is the trier of facts, they look strictly at procedural issues
so SCOTUS is not there to correct legislative language, but to rule only on if or not it falls within the realm of the Constitution
“Congress intended for the subsidies to be available regardless of state or federal exchange.”
ProTIP: typing that out over and over doesn’t make it true. Just FYI.
But if you really, really like this “oh but they MEANT well” policy, then Congress can amend and improve the PPACA even more easily, and with far less wasted ink and paper! Just write “We intend to make healthcare totally better and more awesome than before” on a single sheet, pass it and get the President to sign it. Then, under the Roberts model, everything the gub’mint does to (allegedly) implement that is fully justified and totes legal and Constitutional and shit.