Supreme Court ObamaCare Wrap-up!

It seems the individual mandate in ObamaCare is doomed. The question now is whether or not all of ObamaCare will be struck down. I originally doubted that it would be, but now I’m thinking it might be. One thing is for sure though, losing will not help the Democrats as many of them are trying to suggest.

● Thought One: Down she goes! The Supreme Court will strike down the individual mandate. Kennedy was considered the weak link for the conservative side but even he observed that ObamaCare “changes the relationship of the Federal government to the individual in a very fundamental way.” That’s lawyer speak for “unprecedented power grab.” This court will not sanction an unprecedented power grab. The mandate is toast.

● Thought Two: Incompetence. The MSM’s legal analysts should be fired for incompetence. When this lawsuit was first filed, they claimed it was “frivolous.” In legal parlance that means the arguments are so ludicrously wrong that no rational attorney could possibly make those arguments in good faith. Even as late as two days ago, these same “experts” predicted ObamaCare would win on a 7-2 vote. Now they’re despondent that ObamaCare will be beaten. To give you a sense of how wrong this is, it’s like an “expert” in aviation claiming that airplanes are too heavy to fly. . . after having flown to the interview on a Boeing. Everyone who claimed this was frivolous should be fired for incompetence.

● Thought Three: Incompetence (redux). Everyone now wants to blame the solicitor general for blowing this case. That’s wrong, and the “experts” know that. The Supreme Court does not base decisions of national significance on which side brought the better lawyer. All Verrilli’s incompetence means is that the court will do its own research into these issues. And don’t forget, “it’s own” in this case also means hundreds of legal briefs filed by friends of both sides (amicus curiae briefs). This case never hinged on the performance of either attorney. So don’t let liberals get away with pretending that the law should have been found valid if only Donald Verrilli weren’t such a moron. That is false and it’s meant to distract from the fact this law was an abuse of power.

● Thought Four: Severability. The hardest part of guessing Supreme Court decisions is guessing how far they will go. Right now, we have no way to know if the Supreme Court will strike down the entire law or just the individual mandate. They essentially have three choices: (1) strike the whole thing, (2) strike the mandate but leave the rest, or (3) strike the mandate and send the case back to the lower court to gather more evidence on what other parts also should be struck. Logic tells me, they will pick number three, but this court has proven to be bold.

Politically and legally speaking, it makes sense for the Supremes to strike the mandate and send the rest back to the lower court to gather evidence on which parts of the law rely on the mandate. Why? Because the court doesn’t like to decide things it doesn’t need to, and with the Republicans likely to control the House, Senate and Presidency after the election, the Supremes have the luxury of waiting to see how things go, i.e. Congress may do their dirty work. BUT. . . should Romney NOT win, then the 5-4 Court could end up a 4-5 Court. That fear may give this court an incentive to firmly decide as many things as possible right now -- hence, they are unexpectedly taking an affirmative action case next year.

Right now, the comments of the justices indicate they are leaning toward striking the entire thing. Scalia took the lead here and said that when you “take the heart out of the statute, the statute is gone.” His reasoning is simple: it distorts the congressional process for the court to pick and choose what survives. He also said it would be unrealistic to comb through the 2,700-page law to decide which parts were independent of the individual mandate. Liberal Justice Breyer actually echoed this when he asked the government, “What do you suggest we do? I mean, should we appoint a special master [to go through the law]?” He then placed the blame on the government for not specifically pointing out each provision which should stand. That’s usually a sign of a justice washing their hands of the case. I don’t believe Breyer will vote to strike the entire law, but this tells me he thinks the conservatives will and he is at peace with it.

Kennedy, who is viewed as the swing vote, also appears inclined to throw out the entire law. When Ginsburg said that the court should perform a “salvage job” rather than “a wrecking operation,” Kennedy retorted that doing surgery on the law would be “a more extreme exercise of judicial power.” And he said that “by reason of the court, we would have a new regime that Congress did not provide for, did not consider.” In other words, this would be court-created legislation and that is unacceptable.

The justice who concerns me a bit is Roberts. When it was argued that leaving the rest of the law in place would leave “a hollowed-out shell,” Roberts responded by saying, “but Congress would have passed part of that hollowed-out shell.” That could indicate a desire to leave the repeal up to Congress or at least get more information about Congress’s intent (i.e. send it back to the lower court for more evidence). That was the thrust of Ginsburg’s argument, that Congress must decide this, so they should leave the rest in place and let Congress fix it. But the thing about Ginsburg’s argument is that you can flip it on its head and make an equally valid argument. In other words, you can just as validly say that if Congress must make the decision, then the court should strike the law to give Congress a clean slate. That makes her argument worthless and if that’s all she’s got, then her side is out of ammo.

So while I really can’t tell you what will happen, it looks like it’s 4-4 with Roberts at bat, and I suspect he will strike the entire law because I’m not hearing a good reason not to.

As an aside, let me clarify the severability clause issue. People are claiming the absence of the severability clause means the whole law should be automatically struck down. That’s not accurate. That was the law 200 years ago -- if any portion of the law is bad, the whole thing gets struck down. That’s why people invented the severability clause, because it told courts that the legislature’s intent was to leave the rest of the law in place. Over time, the law morphed to the point that courts no longer automatically strike down whole laws. And the severability clause now is interpreted like this: if the clause is present, then the court must automatically uphold the rest of the law. But if the clause is absent, then the court MAY strike the entire law, IF the court finds that the unconstitutional piece is so vital to the intent of the legislation that the rest of the law could not continue without it -- there is no automatic striking. And we know the Supreme Court has accepted this interpretation of this missing severability clause here, because the arguments outlined above are the court working its way through the legal test of how integral this mandate is to the rest.

● Thought Five: Can’t win by losing. The Democrats are trying to put a brave face on this. They claim that losing would wipe the slate clean for the Democrats and would remove the toxic stain of ObamaCare which cost them the 2010 election. Wrong. Their ObamaCare abuse was so bad it spawned a new political party -- the Tea Party, and it led to an historic thrashing at the polls. Having the Supreme Court declare ObamaCare unconstitutional does NOT wipe away that stain anymore than being convicted of murder makes people forgive you for killing your wife. To the contrary, this will confirm to the public that the Democrats massively abused their power.

James Carville also claims a loss will help because once ObamaCare goes down, “health care costs are gonna escalate unbelievably.” Hardly. ObamaCare does nothing to restrain costs, so why would its death cause costs to rise? To the contrary, with the elimination of the taxes, requirements and restrictions imposed by ObamaCare, one would expect costs to go back down -- or more likely stay flat. Moreover, health rates are generally fixed for the year at the end of the year and won’t go up until after the election, so even if Carville is right, it won’t happen before the election. Nice try, idiot.

● Thought Six: Who are the ideologues? Finally, it’s fascinating that the left can simultaneously call the conservative justices “ideologues” as they admit that they don’t know which way three of the five justices will vote. At the same time, they ignore the fact the liberals made up their mind before they arrived and all spouted lockstep opinions. Who are the real ideologues?