Tornado Alley (PROG)

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SCOTUS Update on Healthcare Debate
Posted on March 27, 2012 by Jason Bradley

It is probably too soon to judge at this point but reports are surfacing that the central arguments against "Obamacare" may not be carrying much weight at the hearings.

Volokh Conspiracy

Today’s Supreme Court oral argument transcript .. http://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcripts/11-398-Monday.pdf .. suggests that many of the justices, including at least three of the liberals, are skeptical of claims that the individual mandate is a tax. This is important not only for today’s argument about the applicability of the Anti-Injunction Act (which probably does not apply if the mandate penalty is not a tax), but to tomorrow’s argument about the constitutionality of the mandate. The federal government has argued that the mandate is constitutional because it is an exercise of Congress’ power under the Tax Clause. Lower courts have almost uniformly rejected this constitutional tax argument, and today’s questioning suggests that the Supreme Court is unlikely to accept it either.

National Journal

As the Supreme Court prepares to hear historic oral arguments on President Obama’s health care reform law this week, a survey of legal insiders released Monday morning found a widespread expectation that the Court would uphold the central pillars of the law.

SCOTUS Blog

Justices asked many questions about the mandate, showing they are deeply curious about its scope and meaning. But an argument that at times seemed almost to bog down in the dense complexity of the tax code pointed toward a refusal to bar the lawsuits that had challenged the mandate and had put its survival before the Court this week. One of the telltale signs of that sentiment was that not one Justice, and no lawyer at the lectern, said that it would be premature and a contradiction of the Court’s tradition against deciding constitutional issues prematurely for the Court to rule promptly on the mandate’s validity.

http://thewesternexperience.com/2012/03/27/scotus-update-on-healthcare-debate/

See also:

Argument recap: A lift for the mandate?
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