Oops! He Did It Again: Roberts Rules in Favor of Obamacare
Over the years many have viewed the Supreme Court as the vast visage of hope in an otherwise often corrupt political system. After all, the Court was set up to be a non-partisan strict interpreter of the constitutionality of laws and regulations. However, that hope has slowly faded and today it took another blow.
In the case of King v. Burwell the Court was tasked with deciding whether subsidies provided under the Affordable Care Act for insurance purchased on the Exchange were constitutional since the Exchange was created by the federal government and not the states as spelled out in the legislation. In a 6-3 decision the Court sided with the government concluding that Congress intended for the states to put the exchange together, but when states refused the government had to step up in order to provide options. In his majority opinion Chief Justice Roberts writes “Without the federal subsidies . . . the exchanges would not operate as Congress intended and may not operate at all.” He goes on to state “If at all possible, we must interpret the Act in a way that is consistent with the former, and avoids the latter.” Once again Chief Justice Roberts is asserting that the Court will not fix electorate errors. But this time he took it a step further by saying that the Court will give the benefit of the doubt to the intentions of Congress and not necessarily to the words they use to enact laws.
Putting aside the fact that this ruling leaves Obamacare intact, we need to be more concerned about the implications of the precedent Roberts and the Court are setting with this ruling. The precedent is twofold: one is that contrary to their Constitutional job the Court is now looking at intent rather than constitutionality and wording, and two the Court is cleaning up after Congress.
The argument could (and should) have been made that if the states refused to create an exchange then an amendment to the ACA could have been added that provided for the federal government to step in and create it themselves. Justice Scalia alludes to this in his dissenting opinion in which Justices Thomas and Alito joined. However, Congress rushed this law through and left the loopholes to be sorted out in the judicial system. Which the majority of the Court chose to clean up leading Congress and the President free to do the same thing in the future and expect the same results. While this is tragic in and of itself, it gets worse when you consider the implications of the “intent” precedent. Now anytime a case comes before the Court and questions a Congressional or Presidential policy the government can argue “well this or that is what we meant and in King v. Burwell the Court concluded that the intent should be given preference not the specific wording.” Can we say can of worms?
Beyond the policy implications the Court has also once again delivered an ultimatum to conservatives: Win an election or suffer the consequences.
It is far past time for the GOP to get its act together. Despite having won both houses of Congress and a majority of governorships the GOP leaders have done nothing but agree to backroom Congressional deals, pander and bow down to political and media pressure and fight amongst themselves. It is no wonder the message of conservativism is marred in mistruths. The only hope for correcting national healthcare—which at its core is really about government overreach and individual responsibility—is for the GOP to stop what it is doing and figure out how to articulate the message of limited government and individual liberty while at the same time dispelling the myths perpetrated by the left. Because if the last few SCOTUS sessions have proven anything it’s that the Court sure is heck is not going to bail us out. Welcome to the new era of partisan judiciary!
Photo via Sal Falko
