Supreme Court declares gay marriage bans unconstitutional. Opinion by Kennedy. Roberts dissents, along with Scalia, Alito and Thomas. Each of the dissenters filed his own dissenting opinion. Scalia joined in the other three dissenting opinions.
The concluding paragraph of Justice Kennedy’s majority opinion:
With the apparent demise of the Confederate flag, the vindication of Obamacare and chronic poor diet, these really are the days that try the elasticity of the arteries of post-55 white male America. But amidst the gnashing of teeth, one thing should be apparent. John Roberts really is the best thing that ever happened to Republican jurisprudence and the conservative judicial movement.
Justice Scalia really needs to become more cautious in how he writes his dissents to leave room for legal theories he may want to make up later.
TPM Reader NB has little time for rejoicing …
Can we stop for a moment now that it’s over and gaze in wonder at the fact that this was ever in question? That the plain meaning of this law could be overturned by four inartfully chosen words?
If I cast my mind back, I can remember the incredulity with which the cases that eventually became King v Burwell were received at the time. These were the acts of dead enders, a judicial grasping at straws.
Calling all law and research librarians. In his majority opinion today, Chief Justice Roberts makes a reference to an old law review article which itself makes reference to a cartoon from that time. Here’s the citation:
Obama reacts to Supreme Court decision on Obamacare at approx 11:30 ET. Watch.
Scalia lashes out: “We should start calling this law SCOTUScare.”
The court ruled 6-3 to reject the latest challenge to the President Obama’s signature health care law. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion and was joined by Justices Kennedy, Ginsburg, Breyer, Kagan, and Sotomayor. Read the full opinion.
My very initial take is the court decided the case in exactly the way it should have, consistent with the normal rules of statutory construction. That means not getting fixated on the select words in the statute that were in dispute — “an Exchange established by the State” — but rather giving meaning and substance to the statute as written as a whole. Interpreting those few words deep in the statute in isolation would have yielded the ridiculous outcomes that had health policy experts, legal observers, and most sentient Americans so deeply concerned about the court’s decision in this case.
Roberts saved the court. But the irony is that in the long run it will be seen, I feel quite confident, as ultimately having saved conservatives from themselves.
It’s so different. Yet seeing the rush for the exits on the symbols of the Confederacy almost reminds me of the flurry of name-changes and turnabouts that followed the fall of the Iron Curtain in Eastern Europe. It is almost like a sudden national convulsion or a gag reflex coughing up at least the most noxious symbols of racial domination. Here’s one you might not have figured on. This morning Mayor of Boise (Boise! which you may have noticed is not in the South) removed the Mississippi state flag (which incorporates the Confederate battle flag) from a group of state flags on display outside Boise City Hall.
We learned this courtesy of TPM Reader TJ. It is, as you can imagine, quite difficult at this point to keep up with all the the flag lowerings, proposed statue relocations and all the rest.
Several top Mississippi Republicans, including the Speaker of the state House and the state’s two senators, have now called on the state to retire the current flag and replace it with a new design, shorn of Confederate symbols.