SCOTUS Sides With Insurers In Obamacare Case | Justices Sidestep First Major Second Amendment Case In A Decade
April 27, 2020
TIME TO PAY
|Today the Supreme Court ruled that the federal government must pay billions of dollars to health insurers that sold consumer policies through the exchanges created by the Affordable Care Act. The justices ruled 8-1 with only JUSTICE SAMUEL ALITO dissenting. He criticizes the court’s ruling in his dissent and characterizes it as a bailout for industry: “Under the court’s decision, billions of taxpayer dollars will be turned over to insurance companies that bet unsuccessfully on the success of the program in question.” The outcome of this case doesn’t impact the future of the Obamacare law. However a separate case that SCOTUS has agreed to hear, brought by Republican-led states, will put the law to test once again.
DODGED A BULLET
|The Supreme Court today also made big news with its decision not to rule on its first Second Amendment case in nearly a decade. In an unsigned two-page opinion, the court declined to weigh in on the case regarding a New York gun regulation that barred transport of handguns outside the city, including to second homes and firing ranges. The rule had already been rolled back by city and state officials after SCOTUS agreed to hear the case, and so the justices returned the case back to lower courts to handle. JUSTICES THOMAS, ALITO, and GORSUCH all dissented from the decision to dismiss the case.
GIMME GIMME MORE
|Justices will hear massive cases next month regarding PRESIDENT TRUMP’S financial records. Today, justices asked for additional briefings in the cases concerning the president’s efforts to shield those records from Congress. The high court asked the parties to address whether SCOTUS even has the ability to decide the case. Ariane de Vogue and Devan Cole with CNN report
ICYMI
|On Friday, the Supreme Court denied a request to revisit a decision it made in January allowing the Trump administration to implement regulations that make it harder on immigrants to seek residency in the if they’ve used public assistance benefits. Robert Barnes with The Washington Post reports, “Citing extenuating circumstances caused by the novel coronavirus pandemic, leaders in four states — New York, Connecticut, Illinois and Vermont — had asked the court to suspend the program because, they said, it was making even those legally entitled to benefits such as Medicaid wary of accessing them. The court’s order did not list any justices as objecting and said it ‘does not preclude a filing in the district court’ if the localities wanted to try that route.”
TOP-ED
|“On April 7, I was on the ballot in an election that should not have happened.” That’s justice-elect of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, JUDGE JILL J. KAROFSKY, responding in The New York Times to her state’s decision to go through with an in-person election amid a pandemic. She writes, “In the end, my campaign was rewarded for our persistence and patience. But victory is bittersweet. It was unacceptable to hold an election under circumstances in which people were forced to choose between their safety and voting. It disenfranchised countless people and raised serious concerns for the future of our democracy. It can never happen again. Now, more than ever, we need to instill confidence in our institutions. I hope I’ll be judged on following the law, not the party line.”
WORK WITH WHAT YOU GOT
|Mark Joseph Stern with Slate covers the battle happening in states over mail-in voting, noting that some states are helping voters obtain and return free mail-in ballots so they can safely participate in the November elections, while Republican-led states are opposing vote by mail measures. Stern writes, “The U.S. Supreme Court has already demonstrated its hostility to federal lawsuits seeking to facilitate mail-in voting during the coronavirus outbreak. So advocates are turning to a state-by-state approach, relying on an underused tool to salvage the election: state constitutions.” Stern also argues that CHIEF JUSTICE JOHN ROBERTS has “eroded Americans’ ability to participate in elections” and that if state courts don’t step in to fill the void left by SCOTUS, “we will see the Wisconsin catastrophe play out across the country in November.”
SCOTUS VIEWS
How The Supreme Court’s Progressive Minority Could Prevent A Stolen Election
Slate“Perhaps the better question is, what might the four progressive members of the court do to prevent such a theft? It would be an unprecedented example of constitutional hardball, but it turns out that there is something Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, Stephen Breyer, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg could do to possibly prevent that scenario. The Supreme Court has a little-noticed—and rarely triggered—quorum requirement.”
Judges Discover A Constitutional Right To Literacy
The Wall Street Journal“For an idea of where the legal left wants to go, look at a ruling last week from the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. The majority of a three-judge panel announced a new constitutional right to state-funded education of a certain quality. The plaintiffs in Gary B. v. Whitmer are sympathetic: children enrolled at failing public schools in Detroit. They report miserable classroom conditions and abysmal test scores. No one has been more critical of the disgraceful quality of many urban government-run schools than we have. Yet the decision isn’t just about the quality of Detroit’s schools. It’s about the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.”