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Supreme Court Upholds Key Obamacare Subsidies
HughPickens.com writes: Retuers reports that the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled 6 — 3 in favor of the nationwide availability of tax subsidies that are crucial to the implementation of President Barack Obama's signature healthcare law, handing a major victory to the president. It marked the second time in three years that the high court ruled against a major challenge to the law brought by conservatives seeking to gut it.
"Congress passed the Affordable Care Act to improve health insurance markets, not to destroy them," wrote Chief Justice Roberts in the majority opinion (PDF). He added that nationwide availability of the credits is required to "avoid the type of calamitous result that Congress plainly meant to avoid." The ruling will come as a major relief to Obama as he seeks to ensure that his legacy legislative achievement is implemented effectively and survives political and legal attacks before he leaves office in early 2017. Justice Antonin Scalia took the relatively rare step of reading a summary of his dissenting opinion from the bench. "We really should start calling the law SCOTUScare," said Scalia referencing the court's earlier decision upholding the constitutionality of the law.
"Congress passed the Affordable Care Act to improve health insurance markets, not to destroy them," wrote Chief Justice Roberts in the majority opinion (PDF). He added that nationwide availability of the credits is required to "avoid the type of calamitous result that Congress plainly meant to avoid." The ruling will come as a major relief to Obama as he seeks to ensure that his legacy legislative achievement is implemented effectively and survives political and legal attacks before he leaves office in early 2017. Justice Antonin Scalia took the relatively rare step of reading a summary of his dissenting opinion from the bench. "We really should start calling the law SCOTUScare," said Scalia referencing the court's earlier decision upholding the constitutionality of the law.
“Words no longer have meaning if an Exchange that is not established by a State is ‘established by the State.’ Under all the usual rules of interpretation, in short, the Government should lose this case. But normal rules of interpretation seem always to yield to the overriding principle of the present Court: The Affordable Care Act must be saved.” If SCOTUS can twist these words what stops them from twisting ANY words?
A small part of me wanted to see this go down, just to watch the shitstorm that resulted and see the Republicans claim that it wasn't their fault.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
If SCOTUS can twist these words what stops them from twisting ANY words?
Except that if "State", only means individual states, then many of the constitutional amendments - including the second - fall apart on the federal level.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
In other words, the majority's decision was based not on the law itself, but on its effects and/or would-be effects.
In correct. In other words. The law was clearly drafted with a given intent that the plaintifs want the court to ignore, however intent of the law is an important part of the SCOTUS's interpretation of all laws.
Not one Congressman has read the law in full — not before it was passed, not after. It is too long and too complicated.
Though it is acceptable for courts to turn to legislative intent sometimes, that's specifically reserved to cases, where the laws language is unclear.
That was not the case here — as written, the law clearly only allows subsidies for residents of those states, that have set up "health exchanges" of their own. Whether that was the intent of the law-makers or not is irrelevant. The court's decision is wrong.
What is written is not what is meant by intent, what is meant by intent is what the law was meant to accomplish. In this case if you remove all context from those few lines you can make it look like the intent was not to provide subsidies to these states (if you ignore that the word state has dual meaning in legislation), however when you look at the full bill, or heavens forbid, talk to the drafters of the law, you can see that the intent was to provide the credits either way.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
In other words, the majority's decision was based not on the law itself, but on its effects and/or would-be effects.
Yes. In the real world SCOTUS looks closely at what impact their decision will have. "not based on the law itself" is a ridiculous criticism--they are being *asked* what the law is, and part of deciding what the law is when there is any ambiguity or potentially counterintuitive result is to figure out what are the consequences if the law is way X vs. way Y.
That's why SCOTUS often considers "administrability" when they are making decisions. It's a fundamental part of how the court operates. Would you rather they kill people Congress didn't intend to kill or that they say "this is a typo and in the context of what you are doing, it's pretty damn clear you would have intended this to mean X if you had bothered to read the law you wrote."
There is zero ambiguity here in terms of what Congress intended; it's clear that a law was poorly drafted. This is a not a maybe-they-meant-Y situation, this is a "hey, they accidentally used a sentence that probably says Y."
But the language of the law is clear. 'State'...
If that doesn't mean 'state' then the court has set precedent to let lower courts decide what laws mean.
And that is not how this nation is intended to work.
The revolution is winning.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
If SCOTUS can twist these words what stops them from twisting ANY words?
Except that if "State", only means individual states, then many of the constitutional amendments - including the second - fall apart on the federal level.
That's why in laws (especially 2400 page monstrosities like this one) they have sections on Definitions to specifically say whether "State" means "50 States", "50 States + US Territories like Puerto Rico", or "50 States + Territories + District of Columbia", etc.
In this case, the law was originally drafted to deal with State-level exchanges. A Federal exchange was an afterthought one they didn't expect/hope would be used. (And according to Gruber, was intentionally left out of this clause.) Whatever the case, the courts should be rewriting when it's a clear cut, cut-and-dried case of an error. As long as there's a plausible rationale for why the text is the way it is ("To discourage States from relying on the Federal exchange, at the cost of the Federal funding that we'd otherwise be giving to the citizens of that State to help with the insurance fee we're forcing them to pay"), we should be relying on the text.
Typos can indeed lead to ludicrous conclusions that can be corrected judicially. This was not one of them.
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
It's a basic principle of statutory interpretation that legislatures define laws by their written text. If the text is vague, you can fill in the blanks by guessing at the intent, but if the text is clear, the text is the meaning of the statute. Since legislation is usually the product of intense horse trading, statutes rarely have any sort of coherent intent and they are often full of contradictions.
That being said, that wasn't the case here. The statute was plainly worded and the whole "only states that set up exhcanges get subsidies" mechanism was bragged about for the first two years after it was signed into law. They only changed their tune when they realized that the structure collapsed if you take away the subsidies (which also control the mandates, etc).
Bascially, the administration asked for Chevron deference, which means "the statute is so vague, we have no idea what it means, so the IRS can make a rule that is directly the opposite of the text". Even this was a stretch.
The supreme court turned around and rewrote the statute for them, saying "the statute isn't vague, it means exactly the opposite of what it says, there's no need for the IRS to even do anything or pretend to need Chevron deference."
Viewing these words as a mistake is the simplest interpretation of the law. The other option is to re-interpret lots of other sections, and change the law to be at odds with how the people writing it meant for it to be interpreted.
The writers of the law clearly wanted to establish state exchanges for any state that wanted them, and a federal exchange for any state that didn't want to roll its own, and that all of these exchanges do the same thing. This might not be apparent in that little snippet, but it's very much apparent in the text of the law itself.
It's not as though the SCOTUS majority is pulling meaning out of nowhere for just this passage. Quite the contrary, they'd have had to re-interpret a lot of text to infer that the law was written so as to exclude subsidies for the federal exchange.
The court doesn't need to twist anything. They use week established rules of construction. This is necessary because a single textual document will never convey every nuance.
"We begin with the familiar canon of statutory construction that the starting point for interpreting a statute is the language of the statute itself. Absent a clearly expressed legislative intention to the contrary, that language must ordinarily be regarded as conclusive.:" Consumer Product Safety Commission et al. v. GTE Sylvania, Inc. et al.,447 U.S. 102 (1980).
But the language of the statue has to be understood as a whole.
For example, noscitur a sociis ("a word is known by the company it keeps"):
When a word is ambiguous, its meaning may be determined by reference to the rest of the statute.
That's exactly what the Court did here, and is exactly what most reasonable humans do in establishing the meaning of any word or words.
Bullshit! Words need to have meanings and laws need to have concrete meanings to whatever degree is possible. Its the whole reasons things are struck down all the time as 'void for vagueness.'
If congress is allowed to retroactively decide what they intended, never mind what the wrote than we might has well go back to a monarchy and whatever the King thinks today goes. A system of laws is absolutely useless when anything can mean whatever government wants it mean. You and I just suffered a blow to any real protection any real possibility of justice. This is just one more example of turning the rule of law into a bad joke. The SCOTUS, POTUS, and Congress should be ashamed of themselves.
There is plenty of evidence in the form of Gruber to suggest that congress did indeed intend to write what they wrote to cajole states into compliance. Sates called their bluff and now congress gets a pass.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
The text is essentially a hunk of code describing how to execute the law.
The controversial section is a bug.
Do you think the courts should faithfully execute the buggy code, crashing part of the country in the process, or do you think they should fix or ignore the bug and allow the law to execute successfully?
Well, according to one of the law's architects, it was a Feature, not a Bug: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34rttqLh12U&feature=youtu.be
So to answer your question: Yes.
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Except there's a definitions section to the law that defines the State as "one of the 50 states". But go ahead. Ignore that.
That was not the case here — as written, the law clearly only allows subsidies for residents of those states, that have set up "health exchanges" of their own.
That's simply not true. There is ONE SINGLE CLAUSE TAKEN IN ISOLATION WHICH SAYS "ESTABLISHED BY THE STATE", but there are other clauses which clearly spell out in more detail the requirements of the exchanges and the relationship between state and federal, but the nutjob right-wing desperadoes who have failed in every other attempt to overturn ACA chose to pin their hopes on SCOTUS taking a single clause out of context...
No, it is a twisted interpretation of the law. "The state" is used seven times in the law and this is the only instance where the court has decided it must mean the sate and the federal government.
Ultimately I believe that the court ruled incorrectly here. The way this should have been handled is that the court should have ruled based on the law as written. The thing is, if our political system wasn't so messed up it would have never reached the supreme court. Congress would have simply fixed the law itself to clarify the actual intent and life would have gone on. Although it is pretty clear what the intent was in this circumstance I think it is dangerous to allow for that broad of discretion for the judicial branch.
"The other option is to re-interpret lots of other sections, and change the law to be at odds with how the people writing it meant for it to be interpreted"
I think I read that book in high-school. Wasn't it called 1984?
It's a basic principle of statutory interpretation that legislatures define laws by their written text.
LMFTY: It's one basic principle in English Jurisprudence, known in legal circles as "the plain meaning rule". The other two are: "the golden rule" and "the mischief rule".
The golden rule allows a judge to depart from a word's normal meaning in order to avoid an absurd result.
The mischief rule sets the court to determine the "mischief and defect" that the statute in question has set out to remedy, and what ruling would effectively implement this remedy.
When America was founded those three principles were firmly in place. Over the years the courts and the laws themselves have been moving away from that tradition, creating the (in)famous loopholes that are the bread and butter of corporate law practice.
The intent matters just as much as the plain language. Scalia himself has defended that intent matters more than plain language multiple times including pulling out 300 year old dictionaries. The affirming verdict itself quotes Scalia from the last ruling where he completely contradicts what he claims in this dissent. He's an inconsistent little troll, he rules whatever he wants, not what the constitution requires.
Unfortunately, Congress is ceding power to both the Executive and Legislative that can only weaken our rights and liberty. They are becoming less and less relevant.
Uh, unless things have changed around here, Congress IS the Legislative branch of the US Federal government.
"A little misunderstanding? Galileo and the Pope had a little misunderstanding."
Repeal the 17th amendment. At least you would have one house that isn't campaigning all the type.
IMO, the 17th broke a fundamental safeguard of our republic.
Most of the comments here seem to be saying that the case was decided incorrectly because the text of the law was clear and the intent doesn't matter. However, there are lots of other cases where the text of the law is equally clear and yet SCOTUS has ruled that intent matters. Let's start with the First Amendment. It's obvious that slander laws run afoul of the plain text of the First Amendment. Which part of "Congress shall make no law..." is unclear? None at all. Yet SCOTUS has ruled slander laws are allowed, as well as laws preventing inciting a riot (e.g., yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater).
For another example near and dear to conservatives' hearts, consider the Second Amendment. The Roberts court has ruled (District of Columbia vs. Heller, 2008) that the Second Amendment establishes an individual right to carry arms, despite the fact the amendment only mentions carrying arms in the context of a militia.
With the current case, the intent of the law was clear (and most of the drafters are still around to ask), so that's what SCOTUS used. Judges aren't just implementations of parsing algorithms that spit out yes or no results based on the text of the laws.
Typos can indeed lead to ludicrous conclusions that can be corrected judicially. This was not one of them.
Apparently, six justices disagree with you...
But if six judges disagreed with you, and they happened to rule against your favored political party, would you placidly accept their decision?
Yes. That's how this works. Part of the function of the Supreme Court is to do what *they* interpret as correct WRT to the law and Constitution, not the most popular or the wishes of the masses or majority.
Congress is free to amend or write a new law - but if they weren't spoiled, selfish children, they would have done that already. They could have easily clarified this, but didn't because Republicans would have used the opportunity to destroy the ACA rather than helping to make it even a little better -- especially important in light of the *fact* that the Republicans have no alternative to the ACA, except to get rid of it. Don't know why they don't want to keep the poor and middle class from getting health insurance...
The person who brought this particular suit is special kind of asshole as he has admitted he has no personal standing as he is already eligible for VA or Medicare coverage - so nice for them to have *his* Universal Healthcare Coverage taken care of...
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
the nutty thing is, many americans believe freedom basically means no fucking rules whatsoever. which is not a state of freedom, but a free-for-all where a few win big and most lose. or the ability to freeload: they broke their arm, they go to the emegency room, then avoid the bill or declare bankruptcy because they want the "freedom" to not pay health insurance and pass the bill onto the rest of us
many americans believe freedom is "freedom" from consequences for irresponsibility. they are merely announcing that they don't understand what real freedom is
actual, real freedom means the ability to live a life genuinely *free* of pocketbook crippling or early life ending disease or infirmary
and to arrive at that, you have to have insurance. to not have that is not freedom, it's freeloading. because if you are injured or sick, you *will* go to the hospital because the pain is more powerful than your shallow teenaged "principles", and we *will* treat you, because we're not a cruel social darwinistic society, despite the fact some ignorant sadistic assholes wish it was
basically the status quo of the pathetic american healthcare system is the product of immature morons who don't even really understand what freedom is even as they whine and shout about it most loudly. the usa needs to have a single payer universal healthcare system like canada, uk, germany, etc.: all our common sense peers, yesterday
that we don't is only a sign of how fucked up we are because of propagandized immature morons who don't understand basic economics (healthcare is a natural monopoly) nor true freedom
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it