Ruling
I honestly don’t think I am willing to read enough to form an airtight opinion on what happened today in the Court, but I do think there is something at least relatively sound about what happened.
The majority opinion, as far as I understand, did rule that the mandate does not stand up using the Commerce Clause. That’s a big deal, as the misuse of this clause is a true travesty of legislative cowardice thrust upon this nation. If the federal government wants to expand its power to regulate, it should do so by constitutional amendment, not by expanding and “evolving” a clause that clearly was meant to avoid tariff and duty wars across state lines, which was a huge problem in the Articles of Confederation era.
What Roberts did, which I don’t think I fully support, was to say, “Look, what you have here is an expansion of authority by taxation. It’s not a regulation, it’s not a mandate. If you have a problem with the tax system in this country, solve it at the ballot box, but don’t look to us to toss out tax bills because they restrict your freedom. You gave this government the power to tax.”
If SCOTUS holds fast to this halt on expansion of the Commerce Clause, this is a landmark decision. If the Commerce Clause gets expanded further within the next 10 years, this is a joke.
In the case of ObamaCare itself, we’ve already seen how this can change behaviors. Obama denied up and down that this was a tax. It’s clearly easier to sell something as a mandate versus a tax. So, the Supreme Court has effectively forced Congress to be accountable to citizens by restricting its power to wielding a club that nobody likes.
It’s not a great day to be a libertarian, but the reasoning applied has some sense to it, even from a conservative perspective.