From Scotusblog:
Decision of the Fourth Circuit is affirmed in King v. Burwell. 6-3.
This means that individuals who get their health insurance through an exchange established by the federal government will be eligible for tax subsidies.
Chief Justice writes for the Court. Six are the Chief, Kennedy, Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan.
Dissent by Scalia, joined by Alito and Thomas.
Court refused to apply Chevron deference — that is, to find that the statute is ambiguous and that the federal government’s interpretation was reasonable.
From Scalia’s dissent: “We should start calling this law SCOTUScare.” From the intro to Scalia’s dissent: the majority’s reading of the text “is of course quite absurd, and the Court’s 21 pages of explanation make it no less so.”
From the majority opinion: “Congress passed the Affordable Care Act to improve health insurance markets, not to destroy them.”
The majority also acknowledges that the challengers’ “arguments about the plain meaning . . . are strong.”
‘In this instance, the context and structure of the Act compel us to depart from what would otherwise be the most natural reading of the pertinent statutory phrase’…
The opinion is here
Justice Scalia’s dissent, via the WSJ:
The Supreme Court of the United States as with any other court is charged with the power to INTERPRET the legislation that they are reviewing. The Supreme Court is an equal independent one third branch of our 3 part government system with the Executive and Congress being the other equal one third parts. I must emphasize that the Supreme Court DOES NOT PASS LEGISLATION but merely interprets it in accordance with our constitution. IF the legislation that SCOTUS is reviewing is found to be unconstitutional or wanting in what Congress intended then it would voted down and the legislation would have to be rewritten and resubmitted if necessary to SCOTUS. Never before in this nations history has the Supreme Court approved of legislation that was written with the ambiguousness as this legislation. What the majority ruling basically said was we know what was in the legislatures mind and what was intended by them so we approved of this legislation even though the legislation didn’t quite state it. Is this not a proactive SCOTUS writing legislation from the bench ? This opinion sets a very dangerous precedent and places the nation on a very slippery slope.