Alito cut the legs out of the latest attack on Obamacare -- and didn't even know he did it

[turbinetree]

The religious right's biggest court victory should be the death knell to the latest assault on health care.

IAN MILLHISER
DEC 17, 2018, 11:15 AM


Remember Burwell v. Hobby Lobby? Hobby Lobby is the single most significant court victory ever achieved by America’s religious right. Before Hobby Lobby, religious conservatives could not wield their faith to undercut the rights of other people. After Hobby Lobby conservative religious objections may be used to narrow the rights of third-parties.

Yet a passage in Justice Samuel Alito’s opinion for the Court in Hobby Lobby could — or at least, should — take on an entirely unexpected significance after Reed O’Connor, a partisan operative turned federal judge, struck down the entire Affordable Care Act on Friday in a case called Texas v. United States.

Judge O’Connor’s opinion is a jurisprudential trainwreck. It misreads the text of the law, draws distinctions that the Supreme Court explicitly rejected, and it feigns ignorance regarding the outcome of a year-long debate where congressional Republicans tried and failed to repeal Obamacare. O’Connor’s opinion is such an embarrassment to the judiciary that even Jonathan Adler, one of the architects of the last partisan lawsuit seeking to undermine Obamacare, called the opinion “strained and implausible.”

But you don’t have to take my or Adler’s word for it. You can also take Justice Alito’s.

O’Connor’s opinion, to the extent that it engages in anything that can be described as legal reasoning, rests largely on statements of fact that Congress wrote into the Affordable Care Act’s text when it enacted the law in 2010. Yet Hobby Lobby rejected O’Connor’s use of such fact-finding statements. Indeed, the methodology O’Connor used in his opinion is so inconsistent with the methodology Alito used in Hobby Lobby that the two opinions cannot coexist.

https://thinkprogress.org/justice-alito-hobby-lobby-latest-attack-on-obamacare-6306777db963/


Alito....................... .................

[BigmanPigman]

1. I this is true...I have been upset and sickened by this all weekend

and that is not good for my already poor health.

[fescuerescue]

2. So what did Alito do?

I read your post a couple times, but I think I missed what Alito did.

[thesquanderer]

4. The post only has the opening paragraphs. Click the link to read the rest. (n/t)

[fescuerescue]

5. Thanks. I hate when people do that

If you can't make the point in 4 paragraphs, the link probably isn't worthwhile either.

not a fan of clickbait

[thesquanderer]

6. Often it is possible to extract the most important 4 paragraphs...

...but lots of people just post the first four, which won't necessarily include the meat. I understand why... it's time consuming and requires a kind of editing skill to find the right paragraphs. (Or maybe a poster doesn't even realize that the 4-paragraph rule doesn't mean it has to be the first four paragraphs?) I agree, it's much more useful when a poster gives us the "4 best," but I'll still click though if it looks interesting enough.

The gist of this one is that the logic the judge used in declaring the ACA unconstitutional is in direct opposition to the logic behind the Hobby Lobby case. So assuming this ACA decision gets to the SC, the court can't uphold it without contradicting another recent SC decision.

[turbinetree]

8. Thanks for the information on my post..................

I have always thought you had to post the first 4 paragraphs and then link the rest.............if the articles are to long which this one is, then I will post relevant information ..................

[TlalocW]

3. This continues a trend I've noticed with republicans

They cannot see past short-term consequences of getting what they want and getting it NOW!

Just off the top of my head, in the last few decades

Religious nuts got permission to send material home with kids in public schools. The program was shut down after Satanists demanded access.
In places you can put up nativity scenes on government property, so can other religions, pissing them off.
Republicans dared democrats to vote for congress to have to use Obamacare, and they did, and that opened up healthcare plans that provided abortion coverage to members and their staff.
And so many more things coming around to bite them in the ass. I guess we should be thanking them.

TlalocW

[politicaljunkie41910]

7. But didn't Trump say the other day that "the decision read so well".

So is it that the Jackass just can't read, or that he isn't able to comprehend what he reads. Whatever the case, the Jackass needs to resign or face impeachment. His time is up. He's a total embarrassment to this nation.