“The case hinged on the court’s reading of one line in the Affordable Care Act. Section 1311 of the law says the federal government will give subsidies to eligible consumers who buy insurance from an exchange ‘established by the State.’ The plaintiffs argued that, consequently, consumers in federally-run marketplaces were ineligible for tax credits. However, lawmakers from both sides of the aisle have said it was never their intention to limit the tax credits to state-run marketplaces.
“Roberts seemed ready to give those lawmakers a pass for this one poorly-drafted line in the law. ‘The Affordable Care Act contains more than a few examples of inartful drafting,’ he wrote. ‘Given that the text is ambiguous, we must turn to the broader structure of the Act to determine the meaning.’
In his feisty dissent, Justice Antonin Scalia charged the justices in the majority of ‘interpretive jiggery-pokery.’
‘The Court holds that when the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act says “Exchange established by the State” it means “Exchange established by the State or the Federal Government.” That is of course quite absurd,’ he wrote. ‘Words no longer have meaning if an Exchange that is not established by a State is “established by the State.”‘
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That, of course, is sheer nonsense. Lawyers and judges encounter ambiguities, drafting errors, and other textual flaws every day. Their job is to see through the language mistakes caused by human fallibility to what the drafters intended to convey by their words. There is a vast body of legal literature consisting of court decisions, treatises, law review articles, and other authorities, on statutory interpretation. Scalia would take a literalist approach, ignore all that, and read the ACA the same way some people interpret the Bible to “prove” that all of modern science is wrong, the earth is only 6,000 years old, and God made the human species in a single day instead of through millennia of evolution.
What’s an idiot like him doing on the Supreme Court?
Photo: Scalia proves again he’s more buffoon than sage jurist.