Individual Mandate Upheld Under Taxing Power

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


10:08: The individual mandate has been struck down but survives as a tax. Say what? More in a moment.

10:10: Wait a second. SCOTUSblog says the mandate is constitutional, with Chief Justice Roberts joining the court’s commies. The Medicaid provision is “limited but not invalidated.”

10:13: From SCOTUSblog: “The bottom line: the entire ACA is upheld, with the exception that the federal government’s power to terminate states’ Medicaid funds is narrowly read.”

10:15: CNN reads a piece from the decision, written by Roberts. Says the mandate is upheld under Congress’s taxing power.

10:16: CNN now agrees that the entire law has been upheld.

So I wonder what the decision says about Congress’s Commerce Clause power? Did they define some kind of limiting principle? Or just punt? More in a moment.

10:19: So apparently this is a 5-4 decision, with Roberts voting to uphold Obamacare and Kennedy voting to overturn. Who would have predicted that?

10:22: SCOTUSblog excerpts this from the section of the decision on Medicaid expansion: “Nothing in our opinion precludes Congress from offering funds under the ACA to expand the availability of health care, and requiring that states accepting such funds comply with the conditions on their use. What Congress is not free to do is to penalize States that choose not to participate in that new program by taking away their existing Medicaid funding.”

10:24: Sure enough, CNN confirms that it’s Roberts and the liberals voting to uphold, with Kennedy and the conservatives voting to overturn. Everyone figured that Roberts might jump to the liberal side if Kennedy also did so, in order to make it a 6-3 decision and give himself the job of writing the decision. But no. This should be good for about a million words of Kremlinology.

10:28: Time’s Michael Crowley tweets: “Friend who worked in House D leadership chuckles at memory of how hard Dems strained to ensure mandate was not seen as a tax.”

10:30: Wow. Apparently the minority believes the entire act is unconstitutional, lock, stock and barrel. Maybe that’s why Roberts defected. He might have been up for overturning the mandate, but not the entire law.

10:33: Amy Howe of SCOTUSblog summarizes the ruling: “The Affordable Care Act, including its individual mandate that virtually all Americans buy health insurance, is constitutional. There were not five votes to uphold it on the ground that Congress could use its power to regulate commerce between the states to require everyone to buy health insurance. However, five Justices agreed that the penalty that someone must pay if he refuses to buy insurance is a kind of tax that Congress can impose using its taxing power. That is all that matters. Because the mandate survives, the Court did not need to decide what other parts of the statute were constitutional, except for a provision that required states to comply with new eligibility requirements for Medicaid or risk losing their funding. On that question, the Court held that the provision is constitutional as long as states would only lose new funds if they didn’t comply with the new requirements, rather than all of their funding.”

10:34: Needless to say, this ensures that Obamacare will be a gigantic political football during campaign season. That will definitely electrify the tea party base, which I guess is good for Romney. Not sure yet what the other political implications are.

10:38: From a friend: “Man, the right is going to turn on Roberts now. He’s going to be the new Souter.” No kidding. Roberts is about to become Public Enemy #1 on Fox News.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate