The case against King, by Scalia, Kennedy et al

The plaintiffs in King v. Burwell claim that the ACA's creators intended to coerce states into setting up their own exchanges by authorizing state-established exchanges alone to credit subsidies to buyers -- denying that power to the backup federal exchange.

In response to this manifestly absurd assertion of intent, the law's supporters have pointed out that no one involved in the law's design, passage or implementation understood such coercion to exist; that laws that make federal grants to the states conditional on specific state action invariably spell out the consequences of non-participation; that the ACA's clear intent is to provide near-universal coverage; and that the ACA's core provisions were designed to be interdependent, so that denying subsidies to residents of some states would render the law inoperable.

On  all of these points, no participant has been so eloquent as the four dissenting Supreme Court justices in NFIB v. Sebelius, the suit challenging the law's constitutionality, who asserted that the entire law should be struck down.

In their dissent, Justices Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas and Alito argued repeatedly that to strike down any core provision -- e.g., the individual mandate or the Medicaid expansion -- was to thwart the intent of the law's creators and render the remaining parts of the law unworkable -- hence the imperative to strike down the whole law.

Abbe Gluck has highlighted the dissenters' most direct assertions of interdependence of parts, laying particular stress on their observation that the law's "system of incentives collapses if the federal subsidies are invalidated" because without the subsidies, "the exchanges would not operate as Congress intended and may not operate at all" (dissent, p. 60).

Equally striking is the dissenters' argument that making the Medicaid expansion fully voluntary, as the Court majority did, would also thwart Congress's manifest intent to provide universal coverage and would thus render the entire scheme unworkable.

The real world case against King: Should the Supreme Court impose "risks and uncertainties" on U.S. economy?

Leave aside for a moment the frankly ridiculous question of whether the text of the ACA authorizes premium subsidies to flow through the federal exchange. .Timothy Jost, surveying 30 amicus briefs filed to support the IRS' reading of the law to that effect, first covers those primarily engaging with the text of the law then turns to those from stakeholders that detail the real-world effects of gutting the ACA.

A note before looking at Jost's powerful survey of these pleadings. Some would argue that these real world effects are immaterial: either the law authorizes subsidies to be credited through Healthcare.gov or it doesn't. As I noted once before, though, the conservative justices who dissented against  the 2012 decision that upheld the constitutionality of the ACA  demonstrated their sensitivity to the real world effects of Supreme Court decisions in that very dissent.

Justices Scalia, Kennedy,Thomas and Alito argued that since the individual mandate was unconstitutional the whole law must be struck down because all its key provisions were interdependent and many of them would wreak economic havoc if left to operate with a core provision removed.  They were quite specific about the potential consequences of disfguring the law without killing it:

Scalia researched torture's efficacy by watching "24"

Antonin Scalia reacted* to the Senate torture report with a defense of torture, as reported by the AP*:

"Listen, I think it's very facile for people to say, 'Oh, torture is terrible.' You posit the situation where a person that you know for sure knows the location of a nuclear bomb that has been planted in Los Angeles and will kill millions of people. You think it's an easy question? You think it's clear that you cannot use extreme measures to get that information out of that person?" Scalia said.

That jogged a memory. What planted this scenario in Scalia's mind? Hark back to June 2007, via the Wall Street Journal Law Blog:

The Globe and Mail reported that Scalia came to the defense of Jack Bauer and his torture tactics during an Ottawa conference of international jurists and national security officials last week. During a panel discussion about terrorism, torture and the law, a Canadian judge remarked, “Thankfully, security agencies in all our countries do not subscribe to the mantra ‘What would Jack Bauer do?’ ”

Justice Scalia responded with a defense of Agent Bauer, arguing that law enforcement officials deserve latitude in times of great crisis. “Jack Bauer saved Los Angeles . . . . He saved hundreds of thousands of lives,” Judge Scalia reportedly said. “Are you going to convict Jack Bauer?” He then posed a series of questions to his fellow judges: “Say that criminal law is against him? ‘You have the right to a jury trial?’ Is any jury going to convict Jack Bauer?”

The conservative justices shake the Etch-a-Sketch -- twice

For supporters of the Affordable Care Act, the tea leaves after oral argument in the Supreme Court were bad enough. In recent days, though, worse omens have deepened the gloom, as the conservative justices have shown signs of clearing the conceptual decks  for a strike-down of the individual mandate at least.  Perhaps implicitly acknowledging that recent legal precedents suggest that the mandate is constitutional, they have indicated a new willingness to cast aside the judicial principle of stare decisis -- let the decision stand. In fact, in the past week, two justices have signaled a willingness not to let their own decisions stand.  And both those decisions have a bearing on the mandate's constitutionality.

First up is Scalia, who is soon to release a new book that has been reviewed by the New York Times. TPM's Sahil Kapur highlights the relevant section:

Misrepresentation of the mandate in the Supreme Court: why it still matters

I have made the case below piecemeal, across many posts. This is an attempt to make it as succinctly and completely as possible.
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In his oral argument against the constitutionality of the ACA's individual mandate on March 27, plaintiff's counsel Michael Carvin asserted, "Congress prohibits anyone over 30 from buying any kind of catastrophic health insurance" (p. 105).

That is not true -- the ACA provides the catastrophic coverage option for others exempt from the mandate, e.g. on grounds of financial hardship. And that factual error signals a greater distortion, one that was not countered and apparently made a major impression on Justices Alito, Roberts and Scalia: that the mandate forces Americans to buy coverage greatly in excess of what's required to offset the cost of catastrophic care for those lacking health insurance. No one pointed out that a) the ACA provides a catastrophic coverage option for those under 30; b) that it extends that option to others exempt from the mandate on financial or other grounds; or c) that the bronze plans offered in the exchanges, as the Kaiser Family Foundation recently detailed, might also reasonably be labeled "catastrophic" coverage.

It seems to me that a) the justices were misled on this potentially crucial point, and b) Kennedy and/or another might still be convinced, if not to accept the mandate as constructed, to divide the baby by further limiting it -- as Marty Lederman suggested they might:

The ACA offers catastrophic coverage: the AP notices!

For almost two weeks, I have been beating a drum, waving a flag, screaming from the bleachers that justices Alito, Roberts and Scalia seemed unaware of a fundamental feature of the Affordable Care Act (and were not disabused during oral argument on 3/27): the ACA has a catastrophic coverage option.  All three seemed convinced that the mandate requires individuals to buy more coverage than many people will ever need, such as substance abuse treatment, and that the young were being exploited as "golden geese" to subsidize the cost of covering older citizens.

My focus was on provisions in the ACA, Section 1302 (e), allowing those under 30 and others who could show financial hardship to buy purely catastrophic coverage. Now, the AP's Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar is out with a story* citing several experts who assert that the bronze plans to be offered in the insurance exchanges, available to all, are also essentially catastrophic coverage plans -- though that definition is contested. Those calling it catastrophic focus mainly on the percentage of costs covered:

Attention Alito, Roberts, Scalia: the ACA has a catastrophic coverage option

Excuse the (edited) repost: I think the info below is important (see also 4/5 update - Marty Lederman raises the possibility of a more limited mandate; 4/10 update - the AP weighs in; 4/12 update, the mandate as self-limiting principle; and 4/20 update - response to Jon Cohn). If I'm missing something, please let me know:
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Attention, Justices Roberts, Alito, Scalia: your objection to the extent of the individual mandate in the ACA may be based on at a partial misunderstanding. Or at least, on a failure by Solicitor General Donald Verrilli and the four justices supportive of the ACA to highlight an important provision of the law. That is:  the Affordable Care Act includes a catastrophic coverage option for people under thirty and others who meet certain financial requirements.

In questioning the right of the Federal government to require individuals to buy insurance, the justices glided past the argument that the requirement was justified because the cost of care for the uninsured drives up the cost of health care for everyone -- that we are all in the health care market -- by asserting that not everyone in the market needs the range of services that policies offered in the insurance exchanges are required to cover. This objection was hammered repeatedly, in a variety of ways, by Roberts, Alito and Scalia, and by Michael Carvin arguing for the plaintiffs.  Here's the first such assertion in the transcript:

JUSTICE ALITO: But isn't that really a small part of what the mandate is doing? You can correct me if these figures are wrong, but it appears to me that the CBO has estimated that the average premium for a single insurance policy in the non-group market would be roughly $5,800 in -- in 2016.

Respondents -- the economists who have supported the Respondents estimate that a young, healthy individual targeted by the mandate on average consumes about $854 in health services each year. So the mandate is forcing these people to provide a huge subsidy to the insurance companies for other purposes that the Act wishes to serve, but isn't -- if those figures are right, isn't it the case that what this mandate is really doing is not requiring the people who are subject to it to pay for the services that they are going to consume? It is requiring them to subsidize services that will be received by somebody else.

And Roberts, broadening the objection:

CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: Well, but it's critical how you define the market. If I understand the law, the policies that you're requiring people to purchase involve -- must contain provision for maternity and newborn care, pediatric services, and substance use treatment. It seems to me that you cannot say that everybody is going to need substance use treatment -substance use treatment or pediatric services, and yet that is part of what you require them to purchase (pp 31-32).

And Scalia, following up a couple of minutes later:

Go tell the justices: the ACA has a catastrophic coverage option

Attention, Justices Roberts, Alito, Scalia: your objection to the extent of the individual mandate in the ACA may be based on at a partial misunderstanding. Or at least, on a failure by Solicitor General Donald Verrilli and the four justices supportive of the ACA to highlight an important provision of the law.

In questioning the right of the Federal government to require individuals to buy insurance, the justices glided past the argument that the requirement was justified because the cost of care for the uninsured drives up the cost of health care for everyone -- that we are all in the health care market -- by asserting that not everyone in the market needs the range of services that policies offered in the insurance exchanges are required to cover. This objection was hammered repeatedly, in a variety of ways, by Roberts, Alito and Scalia, and by Michael Carvin arguing for the plaintiffs.  Here's the first such assertion in the transcript:

JUSTICE ALITO: But isn't that really a small part of what the mandate is doing? You can correct me if these figures are wrong, but it appears to me that the CBO has estimated that the average premium for a single insurance policy in the non-group market would be roughly $5,800 in -- in 2016.

Respondents -- the economists who have supported the Respondents estimate that a young, healthy individual targeted by the mandate on average consumes about $854 in health services each year. So the mandate is forcing these people to provide a huge subsidy to the insurance companies for other purposes that the Act wishes to serve, but isn't -- if those figures are right, isn't it the case that what this mandate is really doing is not requiring the people who are subject to it to pay for the services that they are going to consume? It is requiring them to subsidize services that will be received by somebody else.

And Roberts, broadening the objection:

CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: Well, but it's critical how you define the market. If I understand the law, the policies that you're requiring people to purchase involve -- must contain provision for maternity and newborn care, pediatric services, and substance use treatment. It seems to me that you cannot say that everybody is going to need substance use treatment -substance use treatment or pediatric services, and yet that is part of what you require them to purchase (pp 31-32).

And Scalia, following up a couple of minutes later: