Did Roberts Originally Vote To Strike The Entire Law, But Feel "Tremendous Pressure" And Reverse His Vote?

Volokh:

Scalia’s dissent, at least on first quick perusal, reads like it was originally written as a majority opinion (in particular, he consistently refers to Justice Ginsburg’s opinion as “The Dissent”). Back in May, there were rumors floating around relevant legal circles that a key vote was taking place, and that Roberts was feeling tremendous pressure from unidentified circles to vote to uphold the mandate. Did Roberts originally vote to invalidate the mandate on commerce clause grounds, and to invalidate the Medicaid expansion, and then decide later to accept the tax argument and essentially rewrite the Medicaid expansion (which, as I noted, citing Jonathan Cohn, was the sleeper issue in this case) to preserve it? If so, was he responding to the heat from President Obama and others, preemptively threatening to delegitimize the Court if it invalidated the ACA? The dissent, along with the surprising way that Roberts chose to uphold both the mandate and the Medicaid expansion, will inevitably feed the rumor mill.

If this "man" changed his vote due to Obama's and his liberal friends' hectoring... I don't know what to say.

And so if I have this right: The Federal Government may now levy a special tax on me if I do not comply with their specific directives about what I should buy, or do?

Can they tax abortions at a high rate?

If I don't eat broccoli, they can assign a special tax, right? After all, it's just a little tax. I have the choice to either eat broccoli or pay the tax.

They can do that, right?

Can they tax me at a high rate if I own a gun? How about if I refuse to own a gun?

The government may now, per Justice Roberts, assign special taxes on people if they do not live their lives the way the government prefers.

As an old fuddy-duddy justice said, a long time ago: The power to tax is the power to destroy.

posted by Ace at 12:37 PM

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