The Supreme Court will begin the process of rendering their decision on the Health care bill Coveraage begins at 10 am EDT. Watch live coverage here and here. Will update with more links.
The Term ends this Thursday, with the decision in the health care case and two others. We will begin liveblogging at 7 a.m CT- 8 a .m EDT; please join us.
The Court will issue opinions starting at 10am EDT, with the health care ruling probably starting around 10:15.
You can access the liveblog at SCOTUS BLOG. But if you run into trouble loading the site, you can visit the backup at scotusblog.wpengine.com.
FOR YOUR PERUSAL:
Lyle’s summary of the issues in the health care cases is here.
Lyle’s guide to how to read the health care opinion is here.
Correction: The Supreme Court backs all parts of President Obamas signature health care law, including the individual mandate that requires all to have health insurance.
Watch live coverage and analysis of the pivotal decision, its impact on you and on the presidential race now on CNN TV, CNNs mobile apps and http://cnn.com/live
I’ll be a mofo….ROBERTS siding 5-4
*Developing:* The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld the health care law and its insurance mandate, SCOTUSblog reports.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. was the swing voter, joining with liberal justices to uphold the law, SCOTUSblog says. The law, the Affordable Care Act, required consumers to carry health insurance or to pay a penalty. The requirement was upheld under Congress’ taxing power, the blog says. A majority, however, found the requirement unconstitutional under the commerce clause.
SCOTUSblog founder Tom Goldstein has this summary: “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.” Goldstein had predictedthe law would be upheld.
The court upheld the Medicaid expansion, but said those states that don’t participate in the expansion can still receive funds for the rest of the program, SCOTUSblog says.
The court said the Anti-Injunction Act doesn’t prevent it from deciding the case. The act says suits can’t be filed to challenge taxes until after they are paid. The court said the law doesn’t apply because the “tax” label is not controlling, SCOTUSblog says.
The Supreme Court has struck down the individual mandate for health care – the legislation that requires all to have health insurance.
Get more details on http://cnn.com/thisjustin and watch live coverage and analysis of this momentous ruling now on CNN TV, CNNs mobile apps and http://cnn.com/live
The Supreme Court throws out law making it a crime to lie about receiving military honors, backing a free speech challenge.
The justices will now turn to the eagerly anticipated ruling on President Obamas health care law.
Watch live coverage and analysis of the decision, its impact on you and on the presidential race now on CNN TV, CNNs mobile apps and
House Progressives Will Seek Single-Payer Plan If Mandate Goes Down.
WASHINGTON — The last thing House progressives want is for the Supreme Court to strike down President Barack Obama’s health care law. But if the high court rules Thursday that some or all of the law is unconstitutional, progressives are ready to renew their push for the model of health care they wanted all along: the single-payer option.
“It’s easy to see it’s a good idea,” Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), co-chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, told The Huffington Post. “It’s the cheapest way to cover everybody.”
Ellison said all 75 members of the caucus have already signed onto a bill by Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) to create a single-payer, publicly financed, privately delivered universal health care program. The proposal would essentially build on and expand Medicare, under which all Americans would be guaranteed access to health care regardless of an ability to pay or pre-existing health conditions.
House progressives pushed hard for a single-payer option, such as the “Medicare for all” approach, during the health care reform debate in 2009. But House Democratic leaders couldn’t come up with the votes to pass the proposal, and progressives ultimately caved on the idea in order to pass the president’s plan, on the reasoning that some reform was better than none at all.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/27/house-progressives-single-payer-health-care_n_1630777.html
My Supreme Court-Health Care Prediction
by Michael Tomasky (/contributors/michael-tomasky.html)
| June 27, 2012 11:59 AM EDT
This is easy. I take the darkest and most cynical possible view of the conservative majority; I believe, as I’ve written, that they are politicians in robes (with the partial exception of Kennedy); as such, I believe that they will behave here like politicians, and they will render the decision that will inflict the maximum possible political damage on Obama and the Democrats.
That means overturning the mandate 5-4. But it means doing so narrowly, carefully, almost regretfully. In other words, they want more than anything else not to rile up liberals. Tossing the whole thing would do that. Tossing the Medicaid expansion would kinda do that. Tossing guaranteed issue would kinda do it too, and would even have reach into independents and Republicans, since guaranteed issue is so popular.
They’ll want to minimize backlash, in other words–both backlash against them as an institution and electoral backlash that might help Obama and the D’s. So they’ll limit their overturning to the mandate. And as I say, the majority opinion will say things like gee, we are deeply sympathetic to the problems inherent in the health-care system, but regretfully, we simply can’t endorse this method under our reading of the Constitution.
That way, Obama is screwed (yes–the D’s and even maybe the media will try to paint that as a partial win for the White House, but it won’t be in my view). And yet the majority also seems reasonable. That’s the needle I predict they’re going to thread. What about the law, you say? Fiddle dee dee. This is politics, pure and simple.
If there’s an off chance for a more positive ruling, it’s this, which struck me after I read the Arizona opinion. With regard to the “show your papers” aspect of that law that the Court upheld, it did so by saying in essence, look, we’re not endorsing this exactly, and we’re not NOT endorsing it; we’re just saying that it has to be put into practice, and we’ll see how it’s actually being implemented before we can determine its validity.
That made me think, maybe they can contrive to do something similar on the mandate. We’re skeptical of it. We presume against it. But until it’s implemented and put into practice, we can’t really say whether it’s coercion or not. We have to see how it works for a couple of years before we can decide that.
I have no idea about the law behind that, but obviously these guys can say whatever they want and find the case law to back it up. That’s part of the beauty of being the Supreme Court.
That’s my dim hope. But my expectation is as I wrote. It’s a political court and it will render a political decision, but one disguised as Solomonic and equal to the gravity of the moment. Yours?
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/06/27/my-supreme-court-health-care-prediction.print.html
Well now, Mr. Reich; it’s in WRITING, whatever the outcome…
Robert Reich: Supreme Court will Uphold Affordable HealthCare Act
Predictions are always hazardous when it comes to the economy, the weather, and the Supreme Court. I won’t get near the first two right now, but I’ll hazard a guess on what the Court is likely to decide tomorrow: It will uphold the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) by a vote of 6 to 3.
Three reasons for my confidence:
First, Chief Justice John Roberts is — or should be — concerned about the steadily-declining standing of the Court in the public’s mind, along with the growing perception that the justices decide according to partisan politics rather than according to legal principle. The 5-4 decision in Citizen’s United, for example, looked to all the world like a political rather than a legal outcome, with all five Republican appointees finding that restrictions on independent corporate expenditures violate the First Amendment, and all four Democratic appointees finding that such restrictions are reasonably necessary to avoid corruption or the appearance of corruption. Or consider the Court’s notorious decision in Bush v. Gore.
The Supreme Court can’t afford to lose public trust. It has no ability to impose its will on the other two branches of government: As Alexander Hamilton once noted, the Court has neither the purse (it can’t threaten to withhold funding from the other branches) or the sword (it can’t threaten police or military action). It has only the public’s trust in the Court’s own integrity and the logic of its decisions — both of which the public is now doubting, according to polls. As Chief Justice, Roberts has a particular responsibility to regain the public’s trust. Another 5-4 decision overturning a piece of legislation as important as Obamacare would further erode that trust.
It doesn’t matter that a significant portion of the public may not like Obamacare. The issue here is the role and institutional integrity of the Supreme Court, not the popularity of a particular piece of legislation. Indeed, what better way to show the Court’s impartiality than to affirm the constitutionality of legislation that may be unpopular but is within the authority of the other two branches to enact?
http://wallstreetpit.com/93330-supreme-court-will-uphold-affordable-healthcare-act
Please try to watch C-SPAN or PBS, SCOTUS Blog, etc. Refrain from the other cable networks, they are either 1. carrying water for GOP, 2. misinformed, distorting INFORMATION about ACA.
*LOOKING@YOUCNN*
Supreme Court to rule Thursday on health-care law
By Robert Barnes, Updated: Thursday, June 28, 7:09 AM
The Supreme Court is scheduled to rule on the constitutionality of President Obama’s health care legislation Thursday morning, a potentially game-changing, election-year decision that would define the power of the national government and affect the health-care choices of millions of Americans.
The legislation is the signature domestic achievement of Obama’s presidency; its fate could play a pivotal part in his prospects for reelection. Republicans in Congress and GOP presidential challenger Mitt Romney have vowed to repeal the measure if it is upheld by the court.
Passage of the legislation by the Democratic-controlled Congress in 2010 capped decades of efforts to implement a national program of health care. If it is upheld and implemented, it is expected to extend health-care coverage to more than 30 million Americans who currently lack it.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/supreme-court-to-rule-thursday-on-health-care-law/2012/06/28/gJQAarRm8V_story.html?wpisrc=nl_politics
Justice Scalia must resign
By E.J. Dionne Jr., Published: June 27
Justice Antonin Scalia needs to resign from the Supreme Court.
He’d have a lot of things to do. He’s a fine public speaker and teacher. He’d be a heck of a columnist and blogger. But he really seems to aspire to being a politician — and that’s the problem.
So often, Scalia has chosen to ignore the obligation of a Supreme Court justice to be, and appear to be, impartial. He’s turned “judicial restraint” into an oxymoronic phrase. But what he did this week, when the court announced its decision on the Arizona immigration law, should be the end of the line.
Not content with issuing a fiery written dissent, Scalia offered a bench statement questioning President Obama’s decision to allow some immigrants who were brought to the United States illegally as children to stay. Obama’s move had nothing to do with the case in question. Scalia just wanted you to know where he stood.
“After this case was argued and while it was under consideration, the secretary of homeland security announced a program exempting from immigration enforcement some 1.4 million illegal immigrants,” Scalia said.
“The president has said that the new program is ‘the right thing to do’ in light of Congress’s failure to pass the administration’s proposed revision of the immigration laws. Perhaps it is, though Arizona may not think so. But to say, as the court does, that Arizona contradicts federal law by enforcing applications of federal immigration law that the president declines to enforce boggles the mind.”
Read on:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/ej-dionne-jr-justice-scalia-should-resign/2012/06/27/gJQApkO06V_story.html?wpisrc=nl_opinions