Quote:
Originally posted by chuckrr
The difference is ..what is the responsibility of the court. Pragmatic or strict constitutional interpretation...regardless of the immediate harms or advantages. Some of us feel that when you usurp the constitutional legitimacy ahead of what may avoid disrupting the system you are harming the country in the long term because you reduce the power of the constitution. Of course some people don't think much of the constitution.
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You really should stop using terms you don't understand, because it makes you look like a very big fool.
The entirety of the case made by the plaintiff was that single phrase in this law, when describing which users of exchanges could get federal subsidies, limited those subsidies to exchanges created by State governments. Thus, it was wrong for the IRS to grant subsidies to anyone on the federal backstop exchange. As Chief Judge Roberts stated in the majority decision:
"It is implausible that Congress meant the Act to operate in this manner. See National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, 567 U. S. ___, ___ (2012) (SCALIA,KENNEDY, THOMAS, and ALITO, JJ., dissenting) (slip op.,at 60) (“Without the federal subsidies . . . the exchanges
would not operate as Congress intended and may not operate at all.”). Congress made the guaranteed issue and community rating requirements applicable in every State in the Nation. But those requirements only work when combined with the coverage requirement and the tax credits. So it stands to reason that Congress meant for those provisions to apply in every State as well.4"
AND
"Petitioners’ arguments about the plain meaning of Section 36B are strong. But while the meaning of the phrase “an Exchange established by the State under [42 U. S. C. §18031]” may seem plain “when viewed in isolation,” such a reading turns out to be “untenable in light of
[the statute] as a whole.” Department of Revenue of Ore. v.ACF Industries, Inc., 510 U. S. 332, 343 (1994). In this instance, the context and structure of the Act compel us to depart from what would otherwise be the most natural reading of the pertinent statutory phrase.
Reliance on context and structure in statutory interpretation is a “subtle business, calling for great wariness lest what professes to be mere rendering becomes creation and attempted interpretation of legislation becomes legislation itself.” Palmer v. Massachusetts, 308 U. S. 79, 83 (1939). For the reasons we have given, however, such reliance is appropriate in this case, and leads us to conclude that Section 36B allows tax credits for insurance purchased on any Exchange created under the Act. Those credits are necessary for the Federal Exchanges to function like their State Exchange counterparts, and to avoid the type of calamitous result that Congress plainly meant to avoid. "
To summarize, if all this is too complicated for you: Congress obviously meant to give people the ability to afford coverage. While one sentence in this law seems to limit subsidies to State created exchanges, OTHER sentences in the same law seem to extend subsidies to all exchanges. When you have this kind of ambiguity, you read it in a way that is consistent with the aim of Congress. Congress would not seek to destroy the individual insurance market in state that failed to set up exchanges in a law seeking to expand coverage. Thus the claims of the plaintiffs are wrong.
You of course may feel free to, I don't know, read the decisions in full:
http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions...4-114_qol1.pdf
