Tag Archives: supreme-court

Ruth Bader Ginsburg: "I Wasn’t 100 Percent Sober" During SOTU Address

by ArnetteSoderste Posted on February 13, 2015

Mother Jones

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Contrary to earlier speculation that she had power-napped through last month’s State of the Union Address because it was just so damn dull, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg revealed on Thursday it was actually due to the fact she wasn’t exactly “100 percent sober.”

The 81-year-old justice told a crowd of George Washington University students:

The audience for the most part is awake, because they’re bobbing up and down, and we sit there, stone-faced, sober judges. But we’re not, at least I wasn’t, 100 percent sober. Because before we went to the State of the Union, we had dinner together… Justice Kennedy brought in… it was an Opus something or other, very fine California wine, and I vowed this year, just sparkling water, stay away from the wine, but in the end, the dinner was so delicious, it needed wine.

According to Ginsburg, she was thankfully flanked by colleagues, who, like any good friends, casually nudged her awake when they noticed her dozing off. Watch below:

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Ruth Bader Ginsburg: "I Wasn’t 100 Percent Sober" During SOTU Address

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Ruth Bader Ginsburg: America Is Ready to Accept a Pro-Gay-Marriage SCOTUS Ruling

by ManuelMaurer Posted on February 12, 2015

Mother Jones

In a new interview with Bloomberg on Wednesday, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said she believes Americans are set to accept a constitutional decision legalizing gay marriage in the country, saying it would “not take a large adjustment” for people to eventually come around on the issue.

“I think it’s doubtful that it wouldn’t be accepted,” Ginsburg said. “The change in people’s attitudes on that issue has been enormous.”

The justice’s comments are yet another indication the Supreme Court will rule in favor of gay marriage this June, when justices will hear a monumental case deciding if the Constitution provides the right for same-sex marriages.

“In recent years, people have said, ‘This is the way I am,'” Ginsburg added. “And others looked around, and we discovered it’s our next-door neighbor–we’re very fond of them or it’s our child’s best friend, or even our child. I think that as more and more people came out and said that ‘this is who I am,’ the rest of us recognized that they are one of us.”

Earlier this week, President Obama said he thinks the court will make a historic “shift” in this summer’s ruling and that it’s time to recognize “same-sex couples should have the same rights as anybody else.”

In the court’s decision not to block gay marriage in Alabama on Monday, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in his dissent that the ruling offered another “signal” that gay rights advocates will be similarly successful this summer. Despite the decision, however, several Alabama counties still refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Even with such defiant opposition, Ginsburg maintained a positive outlook.

“One way or another it will be decided before we leave town in June.”

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Ruth Bader Ginsburg: America Is Ready to Accept a Pro-Gay-Marriage SCOTUS Ruling

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No, Congress Never Intended to Limit Obamacare Subsidies to State Exchanges

by BennyBoyes Posted on January 16, 2015

Mother Jones

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The Supreme Court will soon hear oral arguments in King v. Burwell, in which conservatives will argue that the text of Obamacare limits federal subsidies only to people who buy insurance from state-run exchanges, not from the federal exchange. Roughly speaking, there are two prongs of the conservative argument:

  1. The law contains text that explicitly limits subsidies to state-run exchanges. Democrats may not have intended this, but they screwed up in the rush to get the bill passed. That’s too bad for them, but the law is the law.
  2. Democrats actually did intend to limit subsidies to state-run exchanges. This was meant as an incentive for states to run their own exchanges rather than punting the job to the feds.

The argument over #1 revolves around textual interpretation of the statute as a whole, as well as previous Supreme Court precedent that provides federal agencies with broad latitude in how they implement regulations. The argument over #2 relies on trying to find evidence that limiting subsidies really was a topic of discussion at some point during the debate over the bill. That’s been tough: virtually no one who covered the debate (including me) remembers so much as a hint of anything like this popping up. The subsidies were always meant to be universal.

But the recollections of journalists aren’t really very germane to a Supreme Court case. The real-time analyses of the Congressional Budget Office, however, might be. This is an agency of Congress, after all, that responds to questions and requests from all members, both Democrats and Republicans. So did CBO ever model any of its cost or budget projections based on the idea that subsidies might not be available in certain states? Today Sarah Kliff points us to Theda Skocpol, who took a look at every single CBO analysis of Obamacare done in 2009 and early 2010. Here’s what she found:

CBO mostly dealt with overall budgetary issues of spending, costs, and deficits — or looked at the specific impact of health reform proposals on Medicare beneficiaries, health care providers, and citizens at various income levels. The record shows that no one from either party asked CBO to analyze or project subsidies available to people in some states but not others. In a June 2009 analysis of a draft proposal from Democrats in the Senate Health, Education, and Labor Committee, CBO treated subsidies as phased in. But even that proposal, which did not survive in further deliberations, stipulated that subsidies would be available in all states from 2014 — and CBO calculated costs accordingly.

After the Affordable Care Act became law in March 2010, members of Congress, especially Republican critics, continued to raise issues. In its responses, CBO continued to model exchange subsidies as available nationwide. No one in either party objected or asked for alternative estimations assuming partial subsidies at any point in the 111th Congress.

It’s unclear whether this is something the Supreme Court will find germane, but it’s certainly closer to being germane than the recollections of a bunch of reporters.

It’s also possible, of course, that the court will focus solely on argument #1 and never even get to questions about the intent of Congress. Nonetheless, this is an interesting review of the CBO record. The conservative case that Democrats actively intended subsidies to be limited to state exchanges has always been remarkably flimsy. Skocpol’s review exposes it as all but nonexistent.

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No, Congress Never Intended to Limit Obamacare Subsidies to State Exchanges

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1958: The Year That Writing About Gay Rights Became Legal

by BryantRiggins Posted on January 11, 2015

Mother Jones

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I’m familiar with the usual highlights of the gay rights movement, but not much more. So I found today’s article by David Savage about the 1958 Supreme Court case ONE vs. Olesen pretty interesting. Lower courts had ruled the Los Angeles magazine ONE obscene and therefore illegal to ship by mail, but a young lawyer named Eric Julber persuaded the editors to appeal to the Supreme Court:

By coincidence, the Supreme Court was struggling at the same time with the question of obscenity in a case involving Samuel Roth, a New York book dealer, who was appealing his conviction for selling sexually explicit books….”All ideas having even the slightest redeeming social importance — unorthodox ideas, controversial ideas, even ideas hateful to the prevailing climate of opinion — have the full protection of the guaranties” of the 1st Amendment, said Justice William J. Brennan in Roth vs. United States, handed down on June 24, 1957. “Sex and obscenity are not synonymous,” he added.

With that ruling fresh in their minds, several Supreme Court law clerks read Julber’s petition — as well as the magazine itself — and advised the justices it was not obscene. “This was an easy one for the liberal justices. It was a speech case,” recalled Norman Dorsen, who was then a law clerk to conservative Justice John Marshall Harlan and would go on to lead the national ACLU from 1976 to 1991. But even the conservatives were not in favor of censorship practiced by the Post Office.

“The conservatives on the court then — Felix Frankfurter, Potter Stewart and Harlan — were not like the real conservatives we have now. They were more tolerant,” he said. Brennan, the author of the Roth opinion, looked at all the petitions on his own. He would have seen the magazine and its supposedly obscene articles. After taking several votes, the justices decided on a simple, one-line ruling issued on Jan. 13, 1958, reversing the 9th Circuit decision.

This is obviously a bit of local color for us Southern Californians, but also an interesting tidbit in the history of gay rights for those of you who, like me, had never heard of it before. Worth a read.

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1958: The Year That Writing About Gay Rights Became Legal

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Supreme Court Set to Devastate Millions of Lives Later This Year. But Will They Pull the Trigger?

by Belinda Norbert Posted on January 2, 2015

Mother Jones

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Greg Sargent notes that the future of Obamacare is one of the big political unknowns of the new year:

One of the big, looming questions of 2015 is this: Will the Supreme Court really gut Obamacare subsidies in the three dozen states on the federal exchange, potentially depriving millions of health coverage at a moment when the law, now heading into its second year, is clearly working as intended?

One thing to watch as we approach the SCOTUS hearings on King v. Burwell this spring is how many people are newly qualifying for subsidies in those states as this year’s enrollment period continues….We could be looking at a lot of people who would lose subsidies in the event of a bad SCOTUS ruling, perhaps more overall than previous estimates of around four million. And the enrollment period still has six weeks to go.

I’ve guesstimated previously that around 6 million would be affected in 2016 if the Supreme Court kills subsidies on the federal exchange later this year. Charles Gaba figures it’s somewhere around 5-6 million this year. That’s a lot of people who would face one of two things: (a) an increase of maybe $2-5,000 in their health care premiums, or (b) an end to health care coverage completely because they flatly can’t afford the unsubsidized premiums.

Will this affect the court’s thinking? It’s hard to think of a comparable case where a ruling would have had such an immediate, devastating effect on millions of ordinary people. If anything, that gives me hope. Will John Roberts and Anthony Kennedy really be willing to inflict that kind of real-world pain, regardless of their ideological convictions? Maybe not. At least, I hope not, because I’ve basically given up on the idea that the Supreme Court is anything other than crudely results-oriented these days. Especially on the conservative side of the aisle, they simply don’t seem to care much about law or precedent or common sense anymore. They like what they like and they hate what they hate, and they shape their opinions to match.

Maybe that’s just the despair of a liberal who’s seen a lot of cases go against him over the past few years. Maybe. But I guess we’re going to find out later this year.

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Supreme Court Set to Devastate Millions of Lives Later This Year. But Will They Pull the Trigger?

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The Supreme Court has no time for BP’s BS

by duhhumavug Posted on December 8, 2014

The Supreme Court has no time for BP’s BS

By on 8 Dec 2014commentsShare

This morning, the U.S. Supreme Court denied BP’s request to take another look at the settlement it reached in 2012 to pay thousands of people and businesses harmed by its 4.9-million-barrel oil dump into the Gulf of Mexico in 2010.

BP wanted to argue to the highest court in the land that some of the claimants seeking damages from the company in relation to the Deepwater Horizon explosion and spill can’t convincingly link their losses to the mega-disaster. So in August, the oil giant filed a petition attacking its own multibillion-dollar settlement (which included pleading guilty to manslaughtering 11 workers and bullshitting Congress about how much oil was spilling).

But SCOTUS won’t even give BP a chance to make its case. In fact, the justices didn’t even remark on their refusal to hear the appeal.

In the wake of the spill, BP has spent more than $13 billion settling claims by individuals, businesses, and government entities, and another $14 billion-plus for response and cleanup. The settlement that BP’s trying to get out of doesn’t have a cap for how much the company might have to pay out, but BP estimates that it will spend about $9 billion to resolve claims. So far, it’s ponied up about $4 billion, according to Fuel Fix.

Today, legal blogger Tom Young wrote a post encouraging all types of eligible Gulf Coast-state enterprises — those not in the casino, insurance, banking, or real estate industries — to get evaluated by an attorney who’s navigated the BP claims process:

One would be hard pressed to identify too many Gulf area businesses that did not endure some loss, small or large, that related in some way to the disaster. …

That said, less than 30% of all eligible businesses have filed claims. Of those who have filed, the average payment exceeds $100,000.

Even churches and nonprofits might be able to claim some compensation. The deadline for filing is expected to be set for June 2015.

Don’t think the payouts represent the end of this endless saga, though. Dishing out a bunch of money to people affected by the spill is nice, but wrongs won’t be righted that easy.

These days in the Gulf, BP is alleging that the spill is all cleaned up, but the Coast Guard begs to differ — and geochemists have found that some 2 million barrels of crude are still trapped in the deep. Meanwhile, Alabama is putting $60 million in restoration funding toward rebuilding a beachfront hotel destroyed by Hurricane Ivan. I guess otters, tuna, and dolphins will have to file their own claims to some of that settlement cash.

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The Supreme Court refuses to let BP pay less for its oil spill

, ClimateProgress.

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The Supreme Court has no time for BP’s BS

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Five Times The Supreme Court Tried To Understand Pop Culture

by CasiePressley Posted on December 3, 2014

Mother Jones

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Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s fans might refer to her as The Notorious RBG, but when it comes to understanding rap culture, the Supreme Court has some catching up to do. That was clear on Monday, when the justices heard arguments in Elonis v. United States, a case about whether gory, rap-style rhymes posted on Facebook by a Pennsylvania man constituted a real threat to his estranged wife.

Lawyers for Anthony Elonis asserted that his posts should be read as creative self-expression. (Some sample lyrics: “There’s one way to love you but a thousand ways to kill you. I’m not going to rest until your body is a mess, soaked in blood and dying from all the little cuts.”) Justice Samuel Alito didn’t seem convinced that these lines weren’t menacing. “This sounds like a road map for threatening a spouse and getting away with it,” he said. “So you put it in a rhyme…and you say, ‘I’m an aspiring rap artist,’ and so then you are free from prosecution.” Those comments are consistent with how judges and jurors tend to think about rap lyrics—they’re likely to see them as autobiographical and literally true, even though many rappers assume fictional personas.

The Elonis case isn’t the first time the Supreme Court has grappled with what constitutes legitimate artistic expression. From declaring that movies can be broadly censored because they could be “used for evil” to deciding that G-strings don’t limit nude dancers’ freedom of expression, the past results have been decidedly mixed. Here’s are the justices’ most offbeat efforts to play art critic:

1. Mutual Film Corporation v. Industrial Commission of Ohio, 1915

The facts: An Ohio law required anyone who wanted to show a film to get permission from a board of censors, who charged for approval. Mutual Film Corporation, a motion picture company best known for producing Charlie Chaplin comedies, didn’t want to pay. It argued that its movies were protected by the First Amendment because of their power to enlighten and entertain.

The outcome: The justices unanimously sided with the state on the grounds that movies were a business, not an art form—and that they could corrupt the hearts and minds of innocent children. “They, indeed, may be mediums of thought, but so are many things,” wrote Justice Joseph McKenna. “They may be used for evil, and against that possibility the statute was enacted. Their powers of amusement…make them the more insidious.” It took until 1952 for the court to decide that film had proved itself “a significant medium for the communication of ideas.”

2. United States v. Thirty-seven Photographs, 1971

The facts: Customs agents at the Los Angeles airport stopped Milton Luros on his way home from Europe and confiscated 37 photos of couples having sex, based on a 1930 law banning the importation of obscene material. Luros claimed that the photos, which he’d planned to use to illustrate a copy of the Kama Sutra, shouldn’t have been confiscated because they were for private use.

The outcome: The court concluded that Luros’ right to privately possess obscene material didn’t extend to the airport. “A port of entry is not a traveler’s home,” Justice Byron White wrote. But Justice Hugo Black, a First Amendment absolutist, penned a scathing dissent. “I can imagine no more distasteful, useless, and time-consuming task for the members of this Court than perusing this material to determine whether it has ‘redeeming social value,'” he seethed.

(What’s with the weird name: Cases in which a federal court seizes property are traditionally named after the item seized, not the item’s owner—hence the epic-sounding 2011 case U.S. v. One White Crystal-Covered ‘Bad Tour’ Glove and other Michael Jackson Memorabilia.)

3. Barnes v. Glen Theatre, Inc., 1991

The facts: Two exotic dance clubs in South Bend, Indiana, wanted to add completely naked dancers to their lineup. State law required that the dancers wear at least pasties and a G-string. The clubs sued, arguing that the law infringed on the dancers’ freedom of expression.

The outcome: No redress for the would-be strippers. The fact that the nakedness would have been consensual didn’t matter to Justice Antonin Scalia, who wrote, “The purpose of Indiana’s nudity law would be violated, I think, if 60,000 fully consenting adults crowded into the Hoosierdome to display their genitals to one another, even if there were not an offended innocent in the crowd.”

4. National Endowment for the Arts v. Finley, 1998

The facts: After a scandal over artists receiving federal funding—including Andres Serrano, whose 1987 photo Piss Christ depicted a crucifix submerged in a jar of urine—Congress added “taking into consideration general standards of decency” to the NEA’s grant requirements. Performance artist Karen Finley, whose work involved covering her naked body with chocolate, sued the government after her grant application was denied. She argued that the new grant requirements suppressed unorthodox ideas.

The outcome: Congress wasn’t regulating speech, just setting funding priorities, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor wrote for the majority. She noted that the amendment didn’t preclude “indecent” art from receiving grants; it “simply adds ‘considerations’ to the grant-making process.”

5. Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association, 2011

The facts: EMA, a trade association for the home entertainment industry, challenged California’s ban on the sale of violent video games to minors. Before the justices heard the case, they had copies of Medal of Honor and Resident Evil 4 delivered to the court so they could figure out what playing a video game was like.

The outcome: The gaming experience must have won the justices over. They ruled that video games deserved First Amendment protection, overturning California’s law. “Like the protected books, plays and movies that preceded them, video games communicate ideas—and even social messages—through many familiar literary devices… and through features distinctive to the medium,” Scalia wrote in his pro-gamer majority opinion.

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Five Times The Supreme Court Tried To Understand Pop Culture

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Could Immigration Sink Obamacare at the Supreme Court?

by Mark Q Manning Posted on December 1, 2014

Mother Jones

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David Savage writes today that President Obama’s executive order on immigration could have an unintended consequence: convincing Chief Justice John Roberts that Obama really is riding roughshod over the rule of law and needs to be reined in. And perhaps the latest challenge to Obamacare is just the place to start:

Two years ago, the chief justice surprised many by joining liberals on the court to uphold the constitutionality of Obama’s Affordable Care Act. And he probably holds the deciding vote in a second legal challenge to the healthcare law — one that seeks to eliminate government insurance subsidies to low- and middle-income enrollees in two-thirds of the nation.

But Roberts, an appointee of President George W. Bush, has shown an increasing skepticism toward what conservatives call Obama’s tendency to overreach….The question now is whether the president’s immigration action will influence the thinking of the justices, and particularly of Roberts, as they consider in the upcoming healthcare case whether the president exceeded his authority.

….Critics are appealing to Roberts and the court’s conservatives, arguing the president and his advisors have no power to unilaterally change a law passed by Congress. Their argument echoes the criticism voiced over Obama’s immigration directive, accusing the president of trying to fix a broken system by acting on his own rather than waiting for Congress.

Experts say that legally the healthcare case is a close call. If so, the outcome may turn on whether the justices are inclined to give the president the benefit of the doubt, or whether they believe it’s time to rein him in.

Granted, Savage is just speculating here. He really has no evidence for this at all and quotes nobody aside from a single legal expert from the Cato Institute. Still, you have to assume that perhaps Savage has been hearing rumors that prompted him to write this. And it certainly fits into speculation that Roberts may be hunting around for an excuse to atone for his apostasy two years ago when he upheld Obamacare in the first place.

It’s kind of unnerving to even suspect that Supreme Court justices might really think this way. But it’s hardly inconceivable. The law itself, along with the real-world consequences of the court’s actions, don’t seem to occupy a large share of the justices’ minds these days. These are becoming bleak times in Supreme Court land.

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Could Immigration Sink Obamacare at the Supreme Court?

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Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Undergoes Heart Surgery

by Rosie53Xgftn Posted on November 26, 2014

Mother Jones

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is “resting comfortably” after undergoing a coronary catheterization procedure, a press release from the nation’s highest court announced Wednesday morning.

Ginsburg, who at 81 is the Supreme Court’s oldest member, is expected to be discharged in the next 48 hours. From the release:

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg underwent a coronary catheterization procedure this morning at MedStar Heart & Vascular Institute at MedStar Washington Hospital Center to place a stent in her right coronary artery. The coronary blockage was discovered after Justice Ginsburg experienced discomfort during routine exercise last night and was taken to the hospital. She is resting comfortably and is expected to be discharged in the next 48 hours.

Ginsburg has pushed back against suggestions she step down while President Barack Obama is still in office. In an interview with Elle last September, she defended her resistance to such calls. “Anybody who thinks that if I step down, Obama could appoint someone like me, they’re misguided. As long as I can do the job full steam…. I think I’ll recognize when the time comes that I can’t any longer. But now I can.”

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Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Undergoes Heart Surgery

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The Supreme Court Might Gut Obamacare. Your State Could Save It.

by AlyceL77dvcyrf Posted on November 11, 2014

Mother Jones

On Friday, the Supreme Court announced that it would hear King v. Burwell, a case that could gut Obamacare and leave millions of Americans without health insurance. The case hinges on what is essentially a typo in the Affordable Care Act, a mistake that conservatives claim invalidates most of the subsidies the bill provides to help people buy insurance. If the justices buy the conservatives’ argument—and there’s reason to think they might—residents of the 34 states that provide health insurance via the federal government’s HealthCare.gov, rather than through a state-run exchange, could lose their subsidies. Many people would be unable to afford to buy insurance (as the ACA requires), and the whole system could collapse.

Here’s the good news: There may be a workaround. But there’s also bad news: The solution requires the cooperation of Republican governors and legislators.

The King plaintiffs base their argument on the fact that in parts of the Affordable Care Act, the text says subsidies will be available for people “enrolled through an Exchange established by the State.” Conservatives argue that the phrase “established by the state” means the government never intended to, and therefore cannot, offer subsidies in the 34 states that use the federal exchange, a.k.a. HealthCare.gov. There’s plenty of evidence that Obamacare opponents are wrong about this. The rest of the law, its legislative history, and the recollections of lawmakers and journalists who were present at its creation all suggest that conservatives are misinterpreting a vague mistake in the legislation. Even the Cato Institute’s Michael Cannon—the intellectual force behind the lawsuit—once referred to this language as a “glitch.”

Salon‘s Simon Maloy calls the conservative case the “Moops” argument:

I’ve been trying to figure out how to best characterize and/or mock the legal reasoning… and I think it can be boiled down to one word: Moops.

I’m referring, of course, to George Costanza’s famous game of Trivial Pursuit against the Bubble Boy, in which Costanza tries to cheat his way out of losing by taking advantage of a misprint on the answer card: “Moops” instead of “Moors.”

“That’s not ‘Moops,’ you jerk. It’s Moors. It’s a misprint,” the Bubble Boy explains, accurately presenting the game manufacturer’s intent in spite of the minor technical error.

“I’m sorry, the card says ‘Moops,'” Costanza replies, adopting an absurdly narrow and nonsensical interpretation of the rules that furthers his own interests.

There are all sorts of other reasons why the anti-ACA argument here is ridiculous. (Brian Beutler gets into a few here.)

But let’s say the Supreme Court agrees that the card says “Moops.” What then? There’s a way out—for states that want it.

Remember: Even if the King plaintiffs succeed in invalidating health care subsidies for people using the federal exchange, state-run exchanges would remain eligible for subsidies. So if a state wants to save its residents’ health insurance, all it would need to do is set up its own exchange.

There’s even federal money available for states to do this, but the deadline to apply for those funds is this coming Friday, November 14. (The federal Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services would not say whether it would extend the deadline in light of the Supreme Court’s decision to hear King.) Health care exchanges are complex, and a few days is not much time for a state to get its act together.

States could still set up their own exchanges after Friday—as long as they do it with their own money, not federal funds. That could get expensive. But Nicholas Bagley, a professor at the University of Michigan law school, explains that there’s a relatively cheap workaround:

A state could…establish an exchange and appoint a state-incorporated entity to oversee and manage it. That state-incorporated entity could then contract with Healthcare.gov to operate the exchange. On the ground, nothing would change. But tax credits would be available where they weren’t before.

This idea—a state exchange in name only—is clever, and it would take less time and money than a state setting up its own exchange. (It’s also eminently achievable: Oregon and Nevada already operate state exchanges that use federal technology.) But Bagley’s plan still requires a state to want to save its residents’ Obamacare subsidies. Republicans hate Obamacare—in fact, the reason so many states don’t have their own exchanges already is because state-level Republicans refused to set them up. And that’s the real problem: Most of the states that are on the federal exchange—and risk losing subsidies—are controlled at least partially by Republicans, who may block any attempt to salvage Obamacare. (The exceptions are Delaware, Illinois, and West Virginia, and the latter two states will fall under partial Republican control in January.)

“The politics of this will be volatile,” Bagley says. “Governors and legislators are going to come under intense pressure to think about creating exchanges, but it’s probably much too optimistic to assume that Republican governors and legislators will move to establish exchanges in short order. Even if at some point in the future all the states were to establish their own exchanges, that point could be a very long time from now.”

Some experts think it may never happen. Many states “will never establish exchanges, because it means going along with Obamacare,” says Timothy Jost, a health reform expert at Washington & Lee University Law School.

And that, it seems, is exactly the point of King: Setting up a system in which only a handful of blue states have Obamacare, while people in red states—the states that benefit the most from the law—go without. “My personal feeling is that a decision for the King plaintiffs would create an unavoidable catastrophe,” Jost says. “There is no easy way out of it.”

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The Supreme Court Might Gut Obamacare. Your State Could Save It.

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