Courts & Law

SCOTUS Watch: Victory! The Affordable Care Act upheld by SCOTUS

by

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

I first want to begin by noting that I had a bank of television sets on this morning tuned into the various networks. At 7:08 a.m. (AZ Time), the U.S. Supreme Court announced its decision on the Affordable Care Act (aka "Obamacare"). FAUX News Fraudcasting and TeaNN (formerly CNN) immediately announced that the Court had ruled "Obamacare" unconstitutional, reading from their prepared GOPropaganda talking points.

GavelThe exact opposite was true. In a 5-4 decision, SCOTUS upheld the Affordable Care Act in its entirety under Congress' taxing authority. We need to begin a serious discussion in this country about illegitimate news organizations that engage in unlawful propaganda on behalf of the GOP and the conservative movement. Facts are facts, propaganda to create an "alternate reality" of lies is unconscionable and should be impermissible.

Today's decision in favor of the Affordable Care Act is a striking victory and a vindication of President Obama and congresional Democrats. the "unconstitutional" argument from the right has been rejected by SCOTUS.

Here is a quick recap of the opinions announced today. Amy Howe from SCOTUSblog summarizes the cases, followed by a link to today's opinions. The remaining merits cases as of June 23: In Plain English:

The health care cases:

Argued March 26-28, 2012

Plain English Issue: (1) Whether Congress has the power under the Constitution to require virtually all Americans to obtain health insurance or pay a penalty; and (2) whether the Anti-Injunction Act, which prohibits taxpayers from filing a lawsuit to challenge a tax until the tax goes into effect and they are required to pay it, prohibits a challenge to the Act’s provision requiring virtually all Americans to obtain health insurance or pay a penalty until after the provision goes into effect in 2014.

Plain English Issue: (1) Whether Congress can require states to choose between complying with provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act or losing federal funding for the Medicaid program; and (2) whether, if the Court concludes that the provision of the Act requiring virtually all Americans to obtain health insurance or pay a penalty is unconstitutional, the rest of the Act can remain in effect or must also be invalidated.

Plain English Issue: (1) Whether Congress can require states to choose between complying with provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act or losing federal funding for the Medicaid program; and (2) whether, if the Court concludes that the provision of the Act requiring virtually all Americans to obtain health insurance or pay a penalty is unconstitutional, the rest of the Act can remain in effect or must also be invalidated.

In a 5-4 Decision, conservative Chief Justice John Roberts joined the Court's liberals to uphold the Affordable Care Act in its entirety under Congress' power to tax, including the much maligned by the right "individual mandate." From the beginning of the Robert's majority opinion: "We do not consider whether the Act embodies sound policies. That judgment is entrusted to the Nation's elected leaders. We ask only whether Congress has the power under the Constitution to enact the challenged provisions."

For all of those who second-guessed the Solicitor General's defense of ACA under Congress' taxing authority, the tax defense of the mandate was the decisive argument. "Our precedent demonstrates that Congress had the power to impose the exaction in Section 5000A under the taxing power, and that Section 5000A need not be read to do more than impose a tax. This is sufficient to sustain it." A majority of the Court accepted the Administration's backup argument that, as Justice Roberts put it, "the mandate can be regarded as establishing a condition — not owning health insurance — that triggers a tax — the required payment to IRS."

Washington Post: Justice Scalia discredits the Supreme Court, must resign

by

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Scaliagesture03302006The Neoconservative Washington Post, the voice of establishment Republican opinion, has decided that it is time for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia to go.

In an editorial opinion today, the editors deliver the closing argument, Scalia’s discredit to the court (excerpt):

For many Americans, the Supreme Court’s decision on President Obama’s health-care reform poses a keen test of legitimacy. In an atmosphere of intense partisanship, made more acute by a pending national election, can these five Republican-appointed justices and four Democratic-appointed ones pass judgment in a way that impresses most Americans as an act of law rather than politics? We have maintained that they can, or at least that the justices should enjoy a presumption of good faith. But the recent behavior of one member of the court, Justice Antonin Scalia, makes that presumption harder to sustain.

In dissenting from a court ruling that struck down all but one part of Arizona’s law on illegal immigrants, Justice Scalia strayed far from the case at hand to deliver animadversions on President Obama’s recent executive order barring deportation of people who entered the country illegally as children. Based on nothing more than news reports, Justice Scalia opined that this policy would divert federal resources from immigration enforcement, thus creating “the specter” of a “Federal Government that does not want to enforce the immigration laws as written, and leaves the States’ borders unprotected against immigrants whom those laws would exclude.”

This gratuitous outburst, regarding a matter that might someday come before the court as a legal case, followed Justice Scalia’s performance during oral arguments on health care, which included a wisecrack about striking down the “Cornhusker Kickback” — even though that infamous dollop of Medicaid money for Nebraska, allegedly inserted in return for the vote of that state’s senator, was no longer in the statute. He sneered that asking the justices to read the entire 2,700-page Affordable Care Act would violate the Eighth Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. He launched into a muddled riff on an old Jack Benny comedy routine that became so protracted and distracting that Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., amused at first, eventually had to declare “that’s enough frivolity for a while.”

A tutorial for the media villagers on SCOTUS opinion re: SB 1070

by

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

“You are entitled to your opinion. But you are not entitled to your own facts.” ― Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (NY)

In the case of news reporters, they are not entitled to express their opinion either. They are supposed to report the facts.

And yet the corporate media villagers continue to misreport and misrepresent the Supreme Court holding in Arizona et al. v. United States, the Court's ruling on federal preemption of SB 1070.

The only way this is possible after two days is if the media villagers have not taken the time to actually read the opinion in Arizona, et al. v. United States (.pdf), in which case, how can they be said to be reporting on the decision? Or they are simply parroting the GOPropaganda talking points, in which case they are not part of a legitimate news organization. I suppose a third possibility is that they are just effin' ignorant, in which case, why are they even employed by a news organization?

Lawrence O'Donnell has provided the most succinct summary of the Court's ruling on SB 1070 that I have seen to date. So pay attention media villagers, and get it right. Start reporting the facts of this case accurately. Video below the fold.

Obama derangement syndrome and ‘Obamacare’

by

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

The U.S. Supreme Court will announce its opinion regarding the Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare") on Thursday.

Should the Court strike down the Affordable Care Act en toto, it will be disregarding more than 70 years of Supreme Court precedents on Commerce Clause jurisprudence — and if rogue Justice Antonin Scalia has his way — return to the long discredited "liberty to contract" analysis of the Lochner era.

The conservative media, led by FOX News Fraudcasting and hate radio personalities like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Glenn Beck will declare this a "major defeat" for President Obama.The corporate "lamestream" media will follow their lead, as they always do, in the echo chamber of the right-wing noise machine.

But in reality, it will be a major defeat for millions of Americans who just lost their last chance at health care — and quite possibly their life. Jonathan Cohn notes the stakes: a ruling against the law will have far-reaching consequences for millions of Americans and those people — and their ailments — are not going away. The media villagers really ought to concentrate on them, not the transient political story.

Despite the vitriolic hatred expressed for "Obamacare" by the right-wing, that hatred is based upon Obama derangement syndrome. It turns out that if Obama's name was not attached to this landmark legislation, a majority of Republicans actually support its key provisions.

Syllabus of SCOTUS decision in Arizona, et al. v. United States

by

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

The opinion of the United States Supreme Court in Arizona, et al. v. United States (.pdf), cite as 567 U. S. ____ (2012), is some 76 pages in the .pdf format. The Syllabus of the opinion, however, will tell you the substance of the Court's decision. I have added emphasis to some portions of the Syllabus.

An Arizona statute known as S. B. 1070 was enacted in 2010 to address pressing issues related to the large number of unlawful aliens in the State. The United States sought to enjoin the law as preempted. The District Court issued a preliminary injunction preventing four of its provisions from taking effect. Section 3 makes failure to comply with federal alien-registration requirements a state misdemeanor; §5(C) makes it a misdemeanor for an unauthorized alien to seek or engage in work in the State; §6 authorizes state and local officers to arrest without a warrant a person “the officer has probable cause to believe . . . has committed any public offense that makes the person removable from the United States”; and §2(B) requires officers conducting a stop, detention, or arrest to make efforts, in some circumstances, to verify the person’s immigration status with the Federal Government. The Ninth Circuit affirmed, agreeing that the United States had established a likelihood of success on its preemption claims.

Held:

1. The Federal Government’s broad, undoubted power over immigration and alien status rests, in part, on its constitutional power to“establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization,” Art. I, §8, cl. 4, and on its inherent sovereign power to control and conduct foreign relations, see Toll v. Moreno, 458 U. S. 1, 10. Federal governance is extensive and complex. Among other things, federal law specifies categories ofaliens who are ineligible to be admitted to the United States, 8 U. S. C. §1182; requires aliens to register with the Federal Government and to carry proof of status, §§1304(e), 1306(a); imposes sanctions on employers who hire unauthorized workers, §1324a; and specifies which aliens may be removed and the procedures for doing so, see §1227. Removal is a civil matter, and one of its principal features is the broad discretion exercised by immigration officials, who must decide whether to pursue removal at all. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), an agency within the Department of Homeland Security, is responsible for identifying, apprehending, and removing illegal aliens. It also operates the Law Enforcement Support Center, which provides immigration status information to federal, state, and local officials around the clock. Pp. 2–7.

2. The Supremacy Clause gives Congress the power to preempt state law. A statute may contain an express preemption provision, see, e.g., Chamber of Commerce of United States of America v. Whiting, 563 U. S. ___, ___, but state law must also give way to federal law in at least two other circumstances. First, States are precluded from regulating conduct in a field that Congress has determined must be regulated by its exclusive governance. See Gade v. National Solid Wastes Management Assn., 505 U. S. 88, 115. Intent can be inferred from a framework of regulation “so pervasive . . . that Congress left no room for the States to supplement it” or where a “federal interest is so dominant that the federal system will be assumed to preclude enforcement of state laws on the same subject.” Rice v. Santa Fe Elevator Corp., 331 U. S. 218, 230. Second, state laws are preempted when they conflict with federal law, including when they stand “as an obstacle to the accomplishment and execution of the full purposes and objectives of Congress.” Hines v. Davidowitz, 312 U. S. 52, 67. Pp. 7–8.