- This is a naked power grab by conservative justices who two years ago just missed killing the Affordable Care Act in its cradle, before it fully took effect. When the court agreed to hear the first case, there actually was a conflict in the circuits on the constitutionality of the individual insurance mandate. So the Supreme Court’s grant of review was not only unexceptional but necessary: a neutral act. The popular belief then that the court’s intervention indicated hostility to the law was, at the least, premature.
Not so this time. There is simply no way to describe what the court did last Friday as a neutral act.
Badging this so more people will read it. This is judicial activism in the raw. The SCOTUS grabs a case out of the appeals process to undue the ACA in the most expeditious manner possible. This is going to mean that the ACA will fail in all states without state-run exchanges, and given that the GOP will be controlling House for quite some time, it probably also means that those States with exchanges will collapse in due time as no adjustments will be made to fix them, if anything they will be knee-capped in military budget riders. Still, it will be an interesting 2016 campaign season when in the red states, millions lose their health insurance, and prices stop falling, and start going back up.
Looking back, I'm now wondering whether the court made their power grab with an eye toward putting the court challenges to rest. It takes only four members to decide to hear a case, but five to rule. Given that the decision ended up 6-3, at least one person who voted to take the case also voted to uphold the law. This makes the plot a bit thicker (because I doubt anyone didn't have their mind already made up before the arguments). It really makes me wish that they published who votes to take a case. The opacity of the process of deciding which cases are heard and which aren't is very undemocratic, and I wish they would change that rule. Congress could force them to, but it isn't ever on anyone's radar. Who is it supposed to protect, anyway?
Interesting point. It would be nice to think that they picked it up to put it to bed early. Given that Scalia was so upset about it, I would think that he didn't vote to pick it up. Then again, I can't see the progressives picking it up unless they were quite sure that it was going to be upheld. Perhaps Scalia was so pissed at Roberts because he felt betrayed. My guess would be that Scalia, Roberts, Alito and, Thomas voted to pick it up.
Deciding not to hear a case is a de facto way of ruling, since it basically means, "we agree with the lower court." The logical extension is that we should know who is ruling what way. They're obscuring an essential function of government as top secret (but not really, because even top secret stuff often becomes public after a number of years). It's a disgrace, IMO. What if members of congress were allowed to operate in secret? We'd never stand for it.