Supreme Court Upholds Obamacare Again (June 25, 2015)

I used to make sure that I always voted for pro-gun Democrats.

But after the Democratic Party disenfranchised Michigan in the 2008 presidential primary, I now direct nearly all of my votes to Republicans across the board. I even go look up which of the judicial candidates are Republicans and vote for them.

Now, the only way I will vote for a Democrat is if that specific Democrat gives me a VERY good reason to do so. Post 2008, that has happened only once.

Mr. Scalia can be quite caustic when he disagrees with something.

It's interesting that neither Obamacare nor gay marriage was held until the last day. There are still three more decisions scheduled to be released this coming Monday. Usually the most momentous case gets released on the last day.

It is possible that this year they simply aren't going to release a momentous ruling on their last day. Maybe they wanted to release the gay marriage ruling on the anniversary of a previous pro-gay-marriage ruling so that the day could become a holiday in the future.

But it is also possible that something big might be coming Monday morning.


One of the three remaining decisions has to do with the EPA placing mercury emission regulations on coal power plants. It seems likely that the conservatives have the votes to temporarily block this by saying that the EPA "did it wrong" and has to start over and redraft their regulations from scratch. This does not seem like a potentially earth-shattering case.

Another of the three decisions has to do with state ballot initiatives that block gerrymandering by putting the drawing of congressional districts in the hands of a non-partisan committee. No clues how it will turn out. If the Supreme Court were to rule in favor of gerrymandering that might make waves, but hardly on the scale of the gay marriage ruling.

The other decision is to do with the new death penalty drugs that are causing those botched executions. Also no clue how it will turn out. The only way this case would be more momentous than the gay marriage ruling would be if they abolished the death penalty completely. That seems like a long shot, but I guess it is hypothetically possible.


In any case, I'll be glued to the headlines on Monday all day just like I was on Thursday (and for the same reason), so I'll be able to post notice if something big happens.

I suspect the timing had something to do with this being Pride weekend.

Could be. It would be interesting though if we got another groundbreaking opinion on Monday.

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The Supreme Court tries to balance out the number of majority opinions that each justice writes. If someone wrote a majority opinion early in a batch of cases, chances are that subsequent majority opinions in that batch of cases will be assigned to someone else in the majority.

When there are only a few rulings remaining in the overall term, it is often possible to make a reasonable guess as to who the author of a pending ruling is, because they are often the only one who has not yet written a majority opinion from a given batch of cases.

Based on this, it appears that the ruling on Congressional gerrymandering is being written by Kennedy, that the ruling on EPA mercury emission regulations is being written by Scalia, and that the ruling on death penalty drugs is being written by Ginsburg.

If Kennedy authors the majority opinion in the gerrymandering case, that likely means that the court is going to abolish redistricting commissions and allow the affected state legislatures to resume gerrymandering. During oral arguments he was openly skeptical of the notion that the term "legislature" could refer to anything other than the legislature.

If Scalia authors the majority opinion in the EPA case, that likely means that the current mercury emission rules are doomed.

If Ginsburg authors the majority opinion in the death penalty drugs case, that likely means that the current regime of lethal injection drugs is going to be found unconstitutional. During oral arguments she and the other liberal justices were openly hostile to the use of midazolam hydrochloride in lethal injections. Executions will likely be allowed to continue using other means however (like nitrogen gas asphyxiation, or firing squads).

I guess I called that wrong.... LOL!

Alito opinion upheld the use of midazolam hydrochloride in lethal injections.

http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/14pdf/14-7955_aplc.pdf



EDIT: A second miss. Redistricting commissions are allowed.

http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/14pdf/13-1314_kjfl.pdf

Oh well, at least my predictions of the Olympic figure skating results were pretty accurate.



EDIT: Well I got one out of three at least. Scalia just stomped all over the EPA's mercury emission rules for coal power plants.

http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/14pdf/14-46_10n2.pdf

It looks as if Kennedy was assigned to write the majority opinion in Kerry v Din, but then Scalia wrote a concurring opinion that got more votes and became the majority opinion.

That left Kennedy down a majority opinion, leading to my incorrect conclusion that he must have been assigned the majority in the redistricting case.

And my incorrect conclusion that Kennedy got that opinion led to me incorrectly thinking that Ginsburg was down a majority opinion, which is why I then figured her for the majority opinion in the lethal injection ruling.

Given the strong back and forth between the justices on the lethal injection ruling, I expect that Ginsburg would have preferred it had I been right. The traditionally liberal justices read two dissenting opinions from the bench, and then Scalia countered by reading a dissent to their dissents.