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CU law prof comments on today鈥檚 high court ruling on Obamacare
June 25, 2015听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听 Melissa Hart
Melissa Hart, associate professor and director of The Byron R. White Center for the Study of American Constitutional Law at the University of Colorado Law School, comments on today鈥檚 United States Supreme Court ruling on the King v. Burwell case that challenged the legality of the Affordable Care Act. The key question in the case centered on whether the federal government had the ability to provide subsidies to help low-income Americans buy health insurance.
On the ruling:
鈥淣o, I actually wasn鈥檛 surprised. Although it鈥檚 true that a majority of the justices on the court are more politically conservative this was not a hard question of statutory interpretation. The court reached the right answer. (:12) The Affordable Care Act just wouldn鈥檛 have made any sense if only 16 of the 50 exchanges included the subsidies that allowed people to purchase insurance and that鈥檚 what the court recognized in how it structured its decision 鈥� is that it would have been a nonsensical interpretation of the statute.鈥� (:31)
Why it is important that it is a 6-3 decision:
鈥淚 think it was important that it was a 6-3 decision - obviously still a divided court but less divided than the 5-4 decisions that are so contentious and end up making us feel like the decisions were more political. (:14) So I think that was good. (:16) I hope that this means that people can sort of put to the side the kind of constant litigation assault on the Affordable Care Act that鈥檚 using up an awful lot of time and resources of the federal judicial system and it seems to me that it鈥檚 time for this to stop. But it seems, also, unlikely that it will stop because there are constantly lawsuits being brought challenging this law.鈥� (:38)
On politics:
鈥淚鈥檓 sure Chief Justice Roberts doesn鈥檛 like the Affordable Care Act. I鈥檓 sure that he wouldn鈥檛 have voted for it if he were a legislator. (:07) But that鈥檚 not the position he was in when he wrote this opinion. He was in a position of interpreting the law that the legislature passed and in that context you have to put politics to the side.鈥� (:18) 听听听
Hart can be reached by cell phone at 303-229-5323 or at melissa.hart@colorado.edu.