SCOTUS Health Care Decision Liveblog
Estimated time of the decision is 10:15 am EDT, as there are a couple of other decisions to release and it will be a madhouse of reporters and advocates trying to run out of the low-tech court after the release of the decision on the Affordable Care Act.
11:37 EDT Update: Decision Linque to SCOTUS opinions here.
10:33 EDT Update:
Per Amy Howe at SCOTUSblog, who either has a copy in her hand or is secretly blogging from inside the court:
In Plain English: 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.
It’s a trap!