That’s the meme that’s going around today. Apparently, the SCOTUS tea leaf readers think that since there was quite a bit about the problems of severing the mandate from the rest of the law, that SCOTUS might just decide to uphold the whole law after all.
Ummm…in a word…no.
The Supreme Court Justices understand the word “precedent” better than just about anyone in America. They know that every action they make, every opinion they give, even dissenting ones, sets a precedent.
If they decide that the individual mandate is unconstitutional but separating it from the rest is impractical, and therefore they uphold the law, it will set a very loud precedent.
It will tell Congress that anytime they’re worried about the constitutionality of a given bill, just boost the baby up to about 3,000 pages and turn it into a tangled mess. Let me assure you that there is not one single justice on the Supreme Court that wants to send that message to Congress.
Sorry, but it ain’t gonna happen. The end result of today, if you want to go reading tea leaves (and I advise strongly against it), is that the Supremes may be leaning towards chucking the whole law. But they won’t uphold the law, just to avoid a “mess”.
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