SCOTUS Wimps Out On Obamacare — Again.  Obamacare has once again been rescued by a Supreme Court that seems determined to keep it alive regardless of the Constitution or precedent.  Thursday morning [6/17/2021], the justices dismissed California v. Texas based on the dubious proposition that a coalition of 18 GOP states had no legal standing to challenge the "reform" law or its infamous insurance mandate.  The majority didn't deign to consider the merits of the lawsuit, which argued that the mandate was not merely unconstitutional but inseverable from the rest of the statute.  The Court's cowardice drew a blistering dissent from Justice Samuel Alito, who accused the majority of ignoring decades of precedent in order to deny the states standing:  ["]No one can fail to be impressed by the lengths to which this Court has been willing to go to defend the ACA against all threats.  A penalty is a tax.  The United States is a State.  And 18 States who bear costly burdens under the ACA cannot even get a foot in the door to raise a constitutional challenge.  Fans of judicial inventiveness will applaud once again.  But I must respectfully dissent.["]

Supreme Court Tosses Obamacare Challenge by 18 States on Grounds of Legal Standing.  By a vote of 7 to 2 the Supreme Court has upheld the Obamacare law for the third time, ducking the question of its constitutionality by ruling that those challenging it lacked the required legal standing to do so.  The law was enacted in March 2010 without a single Republican vote in Congress on final passage.  Insurance premiums have since skyrocketed, and many consumers have been unable to afford premiums and have lost their insurance.  In 2016 Forbes wrote that there is "overwhelming evidence that Obamacare caused premiums to increase substantially."  Judge Reed O'Connor of the Northern District of Texas ruled on Dec. 14, 2018, that the Obamacare law was unconstitutional in its entirety, but stayed enforcement during the appeals process.  When Congress in 2017 effectively repealed the mandate that compelled Americans to buy health insurance, it "sawed off the last leg it [Obamacare] stood on," the judge held.  "The court finds the individual mandate 'is essential to' and inseverable from 'the other provisions of'" the statute.

US Supreme Court rejects Republican challenge to ObamaCare law.  The US Supreme Court on Thursday rejected a Republican bid that had been backed by former President Donald Trump's administration to invalidate the ObamaCare health care law, ruling that Texas and other challengers had no legal standing to file their lawsuit.  The 7-2 ruling authored by liberal Justice Stephen Breyer did not decide broader legal questions raised in the case about whether a key provision in the law, which is formally called the Affordable Care Act, was unconstitutional and, if so, whether the rest of the statute should be struck down.

Why They Hate Trump.  [Scroll down]  Obama/Biden was the most activist administration since LBJ, intent on promoting universal abortion "rights," open borders, and globalist policies that weakened the United States, and they used the Justice Department and FBI, along with many other agencies, to persecute those who opposed them.  What they especially attacked was the traditional faith of the heartland.  Hobby Lobby found that out, so expect there to be more Hobby Lobbies under Biden.  When the CEO and Founder of Hobby Lobby, David Green, stood up for what he believed and refused to fund contraceptive coverage mandated under Obamacare, Obama's Justice Department sued with the intention of fining and imprisoning him into submission.  Green refused to bow to the Deep State and ultimately won in the Supreme Court.

There are no Obama judges or Trump judges, except when there are.  In November 2018, in response to another of the usual leftist rulings from the Ninth Circuit Court out of San Francisco, President Trump referred to the judge making the determination as an "Obama Judge."  Responding to a query regarding this event made by the Associated Press, the Supreme Court chief justice, John Roberts, is quoted as saying, "We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges." [...] In 2012, it was this same Chief Justice Roberts who changed President Obama's penalty from regulation into a tax from the bench to save the dramatic Obamacare change of relationship between the citizens and their government.  Even President Obama's representatives in front of the court argued against the penalty being considered a tax.  Our chief justice lives in an Obamacare fantasy world of his own design.

SCOTUS: Little Sisters of the Poor Win Again.  During the 2016 presidential campaign, candidate Donald Trump pledged to end government abuse of the so-called contraception mandate.  Health and Human Services (HHS) bureaucrats had been using this bizarre interpretation of Obamacare's preventative care provision as a pretext for trampling on the conscience rights of organizations whose principals had religious or moral objections to paying for certain types of birth control.  In October of 2017, President Trump made good on his campaign promise by instructing HHS to issue a new rule dramatically expanding the mandate's conscience exemption.  Wednesday [7/8/2020], in a 7-2 ruling, the Supreme Court upheld the exemption in Little Sisters of the Poor Saints Peter and Paul v. Pennsylvania.

Supreme Court allows plan for religious limits to Obamacare contraceptive coverage.  The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday cleared the way for the Trump administration to give the nation's employers more leeway in refusing to provide free birth control for their workers under the Affordable Care Act.  The ruling is a victory for the administration's plan to greatly expand the kinds of employers who can cite religious or moral objections in declining to include contraceptives in their health care plans.

Trump administration calls for Supreme Court to strike down ObamaCare.  The Trump administration on Thursday night argued in a legal brief filed to the Supreme Court that the entire Affordable Care Act (ACA) should be invalidated.  The legal filing, while expected, makes official the Trump administration's position in the Supreme Court against the health law months ahead of the election, at a time when Democrats are hammering President Trump over his position on health care.  Overturning the ACA would take away health coverage for about 20 million people, and the stakes are even higher given the effects of the current pandemic.

The Editor says...
There will always be viruses in the air, and there will always be sick people around; therefore, from that perspective, there will never be a good time to repeal Obamacare.  But freedom is more important than safety or health insurance.

Obamacare Has Another Rendezvous With SCOTUS.  The Supreme Court has agreed to hear another constitutional challenge to Obamacare.  The court's latest rendezvous with the "Affordable Care Act" became all but inevitable in late 2018 when U.S. District Judge Reed O'Connor ruled, in Texas v. United States, that the individual mandate was unconstitutional and inseverable from the rest of the statute.  The latter defect, he held, required him to strike down the entire law.  The case inevitably landed in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which upheld O'Connor's ruling on the mandate, but remanded the severability question back to him for further "analysis."  This satisfied neither the Republicans who filed the original lawsuit nor Obamacare's Democratic defenders.

Appeals court skeptical Obamacare can survive.  A panel of federal appeals judges aggressively questioned whether Obamacare can survive during Tuesday afternoon oral arguments in a case that could upend the 2010 health care law.  Two Republican appointees on the three-judge panel frequently interrupted attorneys to question whether the Affordable Care Act's individual mandate is unconstitutional and if not whether the entire law could stand without it.  The ACA's future appeared murky after two hours of oral arguments at the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, but it's not clear if the judges were ready to uphold a federal judge's earlier decision invalidating the law.

Appeals Court Looks Askance at Obamacare.  Tuesday afternoon [7/9/2019], the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals heard oral arguments in Texas v. Azar and aggressively interrogated attorneys defending Obamacare's individual mandate.  They seemed deeply skeptical that the mandate can survive constitutional muster unless the lawyers representing Democratic attorneys general in 21 states and the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives can produce more convincing arguments than they have thus far put forward.  This may well endanger the entire health-care law.

Five States Win $839 Million Obamacare Lawsuit.  Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is leading a five-state coalition that on Thursday [8/23/2018] won an $839 million judgment against the federal government in an Obamacare lawsuit, a massive blow to the Obama administration's namesake legislation.  The Affordable Care Act (ACA, better known as Obamacare) requires medical providers to pay a Health Insurance Provider Fee (HIPF).  Even though the ACA exempts states from paying that fee when providing health care, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) during the Obama era created a regulation requiring states to pay the fee anyway, a fee that is styled as a tax on the states.

Trump is right not to defend ObamaCare.  In the Trump administration's response to the lawsuit brought by Texas and the Texas Public Policy Foundation challenging the current constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the Department of Justice agreed that several key portions of the ACA were unconstitutional.  Immediately, several commentators reported that the Justice Department's failure to defend the law in its entirety was a radical and dangerous departure from precedent.  The Associated Press called the move a "rare departure from the Justice Department's practice of defending federal laws in court." [...] The truth is, the government's decision not to defend a clearly unconstitutional law is neither unprecedented, nor even rare.  Indeed, it is what the founders expected and precisely how we should want government lawyers to behave.

All of Obamacare should be set aside.  The Trump administration's decision to argue that part of the Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional — the requirement that every American purchase health insurance, known as the individual mandate — raises real doubts about the law's future.  The Supreme Court initially upheld the mandate, ruling that the penalty for not purchasing health insurance would raise revenue and therefore is allowed under Congress' taxing authority.  But last year, Congress eliminated the penalty, meaning the mandate would no longer raise revenue.  A 20-state coalition and the Texas Public Policy Foundation have now been joined by the Justice Department arguing that because the individual mandate no longer satisfies the court's test, it cannot be a constitutional use of Congress' authority.

New Legal Challenge May Unravel ObamaCare.  Most Americans understandably consider ObamaCare's legality a settled question, following the Supreme Court's notoriously contorted 2012 NFIB v. Sebilius 5-4 majority decision by Chief Justice John Roberts.  A new challenge filed in federal court earlier this year by twenty state attorneys general, however, presents a novel and potentially fatal challenge to Barack Obama's ramshackle signature legislation.  Adding delicious irony, Chief Justice Roberts's dubious legal rationalization planted the very seed that may trigger its own time-delayed demise.  Compounding that irony, the tax cut legislation signed into law by President Trump provides the specific mechanism for ObamaCare's possible unraveling.

Federal court halts Obamacare appeal, deals setback to president.  A federal appeals court put a key Obamacare case on hold Monday [12/5/2016] as judges begin to anticipate a President Trump, and move to give his administration the chance to change the Obama administration's legal strategy on everything from immigration to health care.  The latest case is a landmark challenge brought by the U.S. House against the Health and Human Services, which was sending Obamacare money to insurance companies despite Congress specifically canceling the money in the annual appropriations process.

Little Sisters' Gutsy Gamble Touches on an Issue That Trumps All Politics.  [O]ur country is hurtling toward a constitutional showdown over religious liberty right here in America.  That'll come in the next month or so, when the Catholic charity known as Little Sisters of the Poor makes at the Supreme Court a gutsy gamble for protection from the birth-control mandate the Obama administration has promulgated under ObamaCare.  Guess who filed the first friend-of-the-court brief on their side.  Yes, it was Orthodox Jewish rabbis.  They know that this case isn't about simply whether a group of nuns has to fill out paperwork to avoid being forced to pay for birthcontrol for their employees.

Supreme Court refuses to take another Obamacare case.  The Supreme Court refused Tuesday [1/19/2016] to take up an appeal that says Congress flouted the Constitution by kick-starting Obamacare in the wrong chamber.  Justices have already weighed in on the Affordable Care Act's mandates, government subsidies and birth control rules, but declined to wade into a bid by a conservative group to scrap the entire law based on the origination clause drafted by the Founding Fathers.

Little Sisters of the Poor nuns will take Obamacare birth control mandate to Supreme Court.  An elder-care charity run by nuns asked the Supreme Court on Monday [1/4/2016] to shield them from Obamacare's birth control mandate, arguing that the government can provide their organizations' female employees with contraceptives if it really wants to but shouldn't force them to facilitate the coverage.  Attorneys for the Little Sisters of the Poor and three Christian colleges say the administration already has exempted a series of employers, undercutting its push to force religiously affiliated groups to formally opt out of the regulations so that a third party can step in and pay for the drugs and services.

The man our founders warned us against.  Although the Supreme Court has tied itself into knots in the Obamacare cases, your attention is warranted in the case of House v. Burwell pending before Judge Rosemary Collyer of the federal district court for the District of Columbia.  Jonathan Turley represents the House in the lawsuit; [...] Hans Von Spakovsky writes about the case in the National Interest column "The war over Obamacare is NOT over."  The complaint carefully sets forth the legal details underlying the lawsuit.

Supreme Court to review religious nonprofits' exemption from ObamaCare.  The latest ObamaCare case involves objections by faith-based hospitals, colleges and charities to the process the administration devised to spare them from paying for contraceptives for women covered under their health plans, and yet ensure that those women can obtain birth control at no extra cost.

SCOTUS Takes Up Little Sisters of Poor Case Against Obama Administration.  The U.S. Supreme Court agreed today to take up the case that the Little Sisters of the Poor — an order of Catholic nuns — has brought against the Obama administration for violating the sisters' right to the free exercise of religion.  "All we ask is that our rights not be taken away," said Sister Loraine Mari Maguire, the Mother Provincial of the order, in a statement released by the Becket Fund, the nonprofit law firm that represents the sisters.

Supreme Court faces new challenges to Obamacare's 'contraceptive mandate'.  Sixteen months after ruling narrowly that companies with religious objections cannot be forced to pay for employees' contraceptives, the court faces a chorus of cries from religious charities, schools and hospitals seeking to get out of the birth control business altogether.

Another ObamaCare challenge heads to Supreme Court.  Foes of President Obama's health care law are taking another crack at upending the legislation, filing a new challenge with the Supreme Court after a separate long-shot case was rejected earlier this year.  The petition filed Monday [10/26/2015] by the Pacific Legal Foundation, like the prior challenge, focuses on an obscure aspect of the law.  The case contends ObamaCare violates the provision of the Constitution that requires tax-raising bills to originate in the House of Representatives.

Judge Clears The Way For Obamacare Lawsuit To Proceed.  A federal judge dealt House Republicans another win in their lawsuit against the Obama administration Monday [10/21/2015], denying the White House a chance to appeal her ruling that the House has grounds to sue over Obamacare.  Federal Judge Rosemary Collyer rejected the administration's request for a quick appeal of her ruling, reinforcing her earlier decision and clearing the path for the suit to move forward, reported the Associated Press.

The Editor says...
That's a strange choice of words by the writer at the Daily Caller.  The word dealt, in cases like this, means to inflict.  One does not inflict a win.

The Supreme Court sleeper case that everyone should be watching.  Supreme Court season is officially upon us, which means we can expect another round of HHS abortion-pill mandate cases and the strong possibility of the Supreme Court taking up one or more of them.  And, thanks to the recent Dordt College victory in the Eighth Circuit, we have an official circuit split, meaning the probability of the Court taking one or more of these cases has significantly increased.  If you are scratching your head thinking this issue was already resolved with the Hobby Lobby/Conestoga Wood Specialties case a little over a year ago, you're half right.

Contraception opt-out violates religious freedom: U.S. appeals court.  A U.S. appeals court has ruled that President Barack Obama's healthcare law violates the rights of religiously affiliated employers by forcing them to help provide contraceptive coverage even though they do not have to pay for it.  Parting ways with all other appeals courts that have considered the issue, the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis on Thursday [9/17/2015] issued a pair of decisions upholding orders by two lower courts barring the government from enforcing the law's contraceptive provisions against a group of religiously affiliated employers.  The split in the circuit courts created makes it more likely that the U.S. Supreme Court will take up the issue in its coming term, which begins in October and runs through June.  Several employers have already filed petitions with the court.

Obamacare can't restrict sale of fixed-payout health plans, judge says.  A federal judge sided Friday [9/11/2015] with an insurance company that says the Obama administration had no right to restrict the sale of its products to people who also hold medical insurance that complies with Obamacare's standards.  The plaintiff, Central United Life, said a significant portion of its revenue is derived from the sale of fixed indemnity plans, which pay out a specific cash amount when a beneficiary receives a health service, regardless of what the hospital or other provider charges.

Judge says Boehner can sue president over Obamacare.  A federal judge ruled on Wednesday [9/9/2015] that House Speaker John Boehner's lawsuit over the implementation of Obamacare can move forward, setting the stage for another high-stakes legal battle over President Obama's signature legislative accomplishment.  Though the judge ruled that House leaders do have legal standing and thus can sue Obama, it wasn't a complete victory for Republicans.  Some legal experts questioned whether the ruling puts the court in the middle of a "political food fight."

Judge clears way for House lawsuit challenging health law.  A federal judge cleared the way Wednesday [9/9/2015] for a legal challenge by congressional Republicans to President Obama's health care law to proceed.

GOP scores early win in ObamaCare lawsuit.  A federal district judge on Wednesday [9/9/2015] delivered a blow to the Obama administration, ruling that the House Republican lawsuit against ObamaCare can move forward.  "The Court concludes that the House has standing to pursue those constitutional claims," Judge Rosemary Collyer wrote in a 43-page decision.

Welcome to the United States of Alice.  In 2012, ACA was challenged for the first time before the Supreme Court.  The majority of justices invalidated the administration's argument that the law does not impose a tax, but then turned the rejected contention into the reason for the law to stand.  "That carries verbal wizardry too far, deep into the forbidden land of sophists," wrote the four dissenting justices.

Republicans look to deliver blow against ObamaCare tax.  Despite the recent Supreme Court ruling upholding ObamaCare subsidies, opponents of the law remain poised to strike a key blow against another component of the health care overhaul in a matter of months.  Republicans, with help from Democrats, have gained momentum in their long-running effort to repeal the law's controversial 2.3 percent excise tax on medical devices.  The House voted 280-140 to nix the tax, which went into effect in 2013, in June; the debate heads next to the Senate.

Now, Focus on Repeal.  The Supreme Court's ruling in King v. Burwell is disappointing.  But it also provides a welcome moment of clarity:  We can finally dispense with the false belief that the Supreme Court will save us from Obamacare.  It is perhaps a blessing for the cause of repeal that all eyes will now turn to the presidential candidates and to Congress, whose job it is to repeal Obamacare in full in early 2017.  Accountability is no longer divided.  The political branches must act.

Scalia Slams Roberts as Biased in Obamacare Cases.  In a blistering dissent from the majority in King v. Burwell this morning [6/25/2015], Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said President Obama's signature domestic policy achievement should be called "SCOTUScare" rather than Obamacare, in light of how many times Chief Justice John Roberts has intervened to protect the law from a crippling legal defeat.  Scalia argued that Roberts rewrote the law twice in 2012, and has now done so a third time in his King decision, which allows the IRS to continue providing subsidies to people who purchase insurance in the federal government's health-care exchange.

Roberts saves Obamacare for 2nd time; Scalia chides: 'Words have no meaning'.  Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. has saved Obamacare for a second time, writing the majority opinion Thursday [6/25/2015] that upheld the health care law's key provision of paying tax subsidies to customers in all states and saying the law otherwise would be a mess — something he doubted Congress intended.  The ruling reverberated immediately on Capitol Hill, but legal analysts said it has implications far beyond the Affordable Care Act because it opens an avenue for judges to substitute their own judgments for the intentions of Congress.

Roberts Makes Key Factual Mistake At The Start Of His ObamaCare Decision.  On the very first page of [Chief Justice] Robert's [sic] King v. Burwell opinion is a glaring mistake about ObamaCare.  The chief justice explains how states that tried ObamaCare-like market changes — called "guaranteed issue" and "community rating" — saw their insurance markets caught in a death spiral as young and healthy dropped coverage and premiums shot up.  Roberts then claims that in 2006 "Massachusetts discovered a way to make the guaranteed issue and community rating requirements work" by adding an individual mandate and premium subsidies.  Since ObamaCare is modeled on Massachusetts law, ipso facto ObamaCare must also be working.  And so the court had an overriding reason to protect it, even if it meant twisting the law into pretzels.

On Obamacare, John Roberts helps overthrow the Constitution.  Conservatives are dismayed about the Supreme Court's complicity in rewriting the Affordable Care Act — its ratification of the IRS's disregard of the statute's plain and purposeful language.  But they have contributed to this outcome.  Their decades of populist praise of judicial deference to the political branches has borne this sour fruit.  The court says the ACA's stipulation that subsidies are to be administered by the IRS using exchanges "established by the State" should not be construed to mean what it says.  Otherwise the law will not reach as far as it will if federal exchanges can administer subsidies in states that choose not to establish exchanges.  The ACA's legislative history, however, demonstrates that the subsidies were deliberately restricted to distribution through states' exchanges in order to pressure the states into establishing their own exchanges.

Glenn Beck: Obamacare vote means U.S. is 'done': 'There's nothing left'.  Radio host Glenn Beck said the Supreme Court's 6-3 decision to uphold Obamacare for a second time is proof "the country as you know it, and as it was designed, is done."  Mr. Beck's reaction to the high court's King v. Burwell decision in many ways mirrors Justice Antonin Scalia's dissent.  "Words no longer have meaning if an Exchange that is not established by a State is 'established by the State,'" Justice Scalia said.  The libertarian radio host said that the accumulation of U.S. debt, coupled with a Supreme Court that acts as a legislative instead of a judicial body, will force the country to "reset" in the future.

James Madison and Antonin Scalia blister a lawless Supreme Court.  Echoing Madison's sentiments, in his dissent to the ludicrous majority decision of King v. Burwell, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote:  ["]Words no longer have meaning if an Exchange that is not established by a State is 'established by the State' ... Under all the usual rules of interpretation, in short, the Government should lose this case.  But normal rules of interpretation seem always to yield to the overriding principle of the present Court:  The Affordable Care Act must be saved ... We should start calling this law SCOTUScare.["]

Ruth Bader Ginsburg v. Life and Liberty.  In the 2014 case of Burwell v.  Hobby Lobby, Ginsburg wrote a dissent arguing that the government could force a family-owned business to engage in activities that violated the religious convictions of its owners.  In this case, the specific act was providing insurance coverage for the abortion-inducing drugs and devices required by regulations issued under the Affordable Care Act.  At that time, Ginsburg argued that only religious organizations could be exempted from government regulations that required the administrators or operators to violate their religious convictions.  "I would confine religious exemptions under the Act to organizations formed 'for a religious purpose,' 'engage(d) primarily in carrying out that religious purpose,' and not 'engaged ... substantially in the exchange of goods and services for money beyond nominal amounts,'" she wrote.

Supreme Court Ruling — Obamacare Subsidies Stay.  In a 6-3 ruling authored by Chief Justice Roberts, the Court held that subsidies are available on the federal exchanges.  Those voting in the majority were Roberts, Kennedy, Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan.  Had the court ruled otherwise, it would have put all of Obamacare in jeopardy, since 38 states do not have exchanges and Obamacare is too expensive for most people without a subsidy.

Scalia Blasts Obamacare Ruling: 'Words Have No Meaning'.  The Supreme Court of the United States effectively rewrote the text of Obamacare to save the legislation.  By a 6-3 majority, the Court upheld the Fourth Circuit's decision in King v. Burwell and decided that federal subsidies were available on state Obamacare exchanges, even though the text of the so-called Affordable Care Act said that such subsidies were only available on "State" exchanges.  The majority acknowledged that the word "State" was, at best, "ambiguous."  And it rejected the idea that an executive agency, in this case the Internal Revenue Service, could decide the meaning of that term.  Rewriting the law is evidently meant for the courts, not the administration — or Congress.

Supreme Court Caves on Obamacare Again.  The Supreme Court had an opportunity, with its ruling in King v. Burwell, to determine whether the United States is a nation of laws or of men.  Today [6/25/2015], in a 6-3 decision, the Court ruled that we have devolved into the latter.  Although the text of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. Obamacare) clearly states that the government may issue subsidies only through insurance exchanges established by the states, Obama administration bureaucrats unilaterally rewrote that part of the law so that the IRS could dispense such premium assistance through "marketplaces" created by the federal government.  The plaintiffs in King sued the government on the grounds that the Executive Branch has no power to thus alter an act of Congress.  Incredibly, SCOTUS has sided with the White House.

Top 9 Quotes From Justice Scalia's Scathing Dissent in King v. Burwell.  [#3] "Words no longer have meaning if an Exchange that is not established by a State is 'established by the State.'"  [#4] "Under all the usual rules of interpretation, in short, the Government should lose this case.  But normal rules of interpretation seem always to yield to the overriding principle of the present Court:  The Affordable Care Act must be saved."

Roberts Gets It Wrong Again.  The text of the law authorizes federal subsidies on health-insurance exchanges "established by the state," but does not authorize them on exchanges established by the federal government.  Since most states have not established exchanges, reading the law the way it was written would limit the law's reach.  The administration therefore decided not to do so — and the Court has blessed its decision, and barred future administrations from revisiting it.

The Media Doesn't Want Americans To Know Anything About King v. Burwell.  According to a new poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation, 7 in 10 Americans have heard little or nothing about King v. Burwell, the U.S. Supreme Court case that will, any day now, decide the fate of Obamacare's health insurance subsidies for millions of Americans.  Yet 63 percent of those surveyed also say that if the court rules against the government, Congress should act to keep those subsidies in place.  Got that?  The vast majority of Americans know almost nothing about this case, but 63 percent have an opinion about what Congress should do in response to a ruling that carries certain policy implications.  How can this be?

House Republicans craft Obamacare subsidies alternative ahead of Supreme Court ruling.  House Republicans settled on the outlines of a plan Wednesday [6/17/2015] to wean the country off of Obamacare's subsidies in anticipation of a Supreme Court ruling this month that could throw the massive health program into chaos.  Described as a "work in progress," the plan would continue to pay full subsidies under the Affordable Care Act to all beneficiaries regardless of where they live, but starting next year states could begin to opt out of Obamacare, taking the money as a block grant to help their residents obtain insurance however local officials see fit.  The block grants and subsidies, including those for states that stay in Obamacare, would expire in 2017, forcing the next president and Congress to replace the law entirely.

If Hillary's Elected President, Get Ready for Massive Obamacare Taxes.  The Supreme Court will soon announce its decision in King v. Burwell, a case that could have far-ranging impact on the Affordable Care Act.  The system more commonly known as Obamacare pays subsidies to taxpayers below 400 percent of the poverty line to cover health-insurance premiums.  The plaintiffs in King argue that the explicit language of the law forbids subsidy payments to those purchasing health insurance outside of a state exchange.  If the Supreme Court decides to follow the explicit textual language of the ACA, people in 34 states could end up with skyrocketing premiums and no way to pay them.

Democrats cast Supreme Court's subsidies ruling as final Obamacare showdown.  President Obama and his top aides are increasingly portraying this month's Supreme Court ruling on Obamacare subsidies as the final showdown for the health care law, saying that if the justices rule in their favor it should be the signal for Republicans to give up their attacks and move on to other fights.  Mr. Obama blasted the court last week for even taking up the case, arguing that his signature law "doesn't need fixing."

The "Moral Weight" Behind A Constitutional Monstrosity.  Politico reports that the President is now trying to place "unusual moral weight" behind his case for fudging the text of Obamacare to provide subsidies in states without exchanges.  "Unusual" is putting it generously.  I'd say the moral reasons to let the IRS rewrite Obamacare are about as strong as the legal justifications:  very, very weak.  There is nothing moral about misleading people to achieve your political goals.  That's true whether you're trying to get a law passed and assure people that they will be able to keep their doctor and insurance, or you are trying to expand the number of people enrolling and you tell people they are entitled to subsidies they don't qualify for.

Burwell: Obama wouldn't sign GOP plan to extend insurance subsidies.  U.S. President Barack Obama would not sign a Republican plan to extend subsidies for buying insurance under Obamacare if the Supreme Court rules against such assistance in the pending King v. Burwell case, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell said on Wednesday [6/10/2015].

There's No Proof Americans Want The Supreme Court To Save Obamacare.  [N]o challenge has provoked a wall of fabricated anger quite like the debate around the King v. Burwell.  Left-partisan punditry continues to act like millions could lose insurance subsidies because of a mere "typo" rather than a major discrepancy embedded in a massive reform law that, at the very least, deserves some scrutiny from the courts.  That seems to also be what The Washington Post seems to believe.

Obama Tries To Bully The Supreme Court One More Time.  It's been five years since President Obama signed ObamaCare into law, so why is he still giving speeches defending it?  Because this isn't about health care.  It's about attacking the Supreme Court.

Only 2 states accept federal offer to protect subsidies if court rules against Obamacare.  More than 30 of states face the loss of federal health care subsidies should the Supreme Court rule against the Obama administration this month, but only two — Pennsylvania and Delaware — have signaled that they are considering further embracing Obamacare in a bid to head off the effects of the ruling.

Obama blasts Supreme Court for accepting challenge to health care law.  President Obama assaulted the nation's top court and seemed to criticize the U.S. legal system as a whole Monday [6/8/2015], with the former constitutional law professor declaring that the Supreme Court was wrong to even accept a challenge to his signature health care reform law and deriding the fact that an "individual district court judge" was able to derail his deportation amnesty.  The president made the comments during a press conference in Krun, Germany, after the Group of Seven summit.

Obama: Congress can fix health law if court rules against it.  President Barack Obama says he has no alternate plan if the Supreme Court invalidates a key benefit of his health care law and he places the burden on the Republican-controlled Congress to fix the law if the high court wipes out insurance for millions of Americans.

Can King v. Burwell Revive the Economy?  The Democrats and their media allies have predicted wrack and ruin if the Supreme Court rules against the government in King v. Burwell, a decision that would stop the IRS from issuing Obamacare subsidies through federal insurance exchanges in three-dozen states.  They have wildly exaggerated the inconvenience that such a ruling would cause a tiny percentage of the population and ignored the benefits that it would provide tens of millions of Americans. One of these benefits would be the removal of PPACA's dead weight from an economy whose first quarter performance suggests that the anemic Obama recovery may be stalling.

Obama slams Obamacare case as 'twisted interpretation of four words'.  President Obama argued Monday [6/8/2015] that the Supreme Court case on the legality of Obamacare subsidies is a no-brainer, and said it's a case the high court probably shouldn't have been bothered with.  "This should be an easy case," Obama said when asked about the pending case after the G-7 meeting in Germany.  "Frankly, it probably shouldn't even have been taken up."

Obamacare ruling a time bomb for Democrats?  Democrats and Republicans are sitting on the edge of their seats, waiting to see what the Supreme Court will decide in King v. Burwell, the looming decision about the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, as it has come to be known. [...] The plaintiffs have argued that based on the literal reading of the legislation, the government is only supposed to provide citizens with subsidies in states that set up their own health care exchanges (a total of 16 states).

First hearing in House lawsuit over Obama health law.  A skeptical federal judge grilled Obama administration lawyers Thursday [5/28/2015] over the House GOP's health care lawsuit, sounding unlikely to side with the president and dismiss the case.

Federal judge skeptical of W.H. bid to toss John Boehner's suit over Obamacare.  A federal judge resisted the administration's quest Thursday [5/28/2015] to kill the House GOP's lawsuit over Obamacare, lending weight to Speaker John A. Boehner's effort to have the courts step in to referee the simmering separation of powers feud between Congress and President Obama.  U.S. District Judge Rosemary M. Collyer, presiding in Washington, pushed back against the Justice Department's argument that the courts don't have a role to play in refereeing the fight.  "You don't really believe that, do you?" she told administration attorney Joel McElvain.

Four Words That Imperil Health Care Law Were All a Mistake, Writers Now Say.  They are only four words in a 900-page law:  "established by the state."  But it is in the ambiguity of those four words in the Affordable Care Act that opponents found a path to challenge the law, all the way to the Supreme Court.  How those words became the most contentious part of President Obama's signature domestic accomplishment has been a mystery.  Who wrote them, and why?

Obama's Game of Chicken with the Supreme Court.  The plaintiffs [in King v. Burwell] charge that, based on a strict reading of single sentence (actually, four words), federal health-insurance subsidies should be available only in the sixteen states (and the District of Columbia) that set up their own health exchanges, or marketplaces.  This means, they argue, that there should be no subsidies for people who now buy insurance on the federal exchange in the other thirty-four states.  At the moment, about thirteen million people receive those subsidies.  The people with the most riding on the outcome, of course, are those thirteen million.

Supreme Court tosses pro-ObamaCare contraception ruling.  The Supreme Court on Monday [4/27/2015] gave new life to a lawsuit challenging ObamaCare's contraception mandate, striking down a previous ruling in favor of the federal government.  The justices asked an appeals court in Cincinnati to reconsider a legal challenge that the Catholic ministries in Michigan and Tennessee filed against an ObamaCare provision that requires employers to cover birth control for all workers.

Who Will Be Blamed for King v. Burwell 'Chaos'?  A Supreme Court ruling against the Obama administration in King v. Burwell, according to conventional Beltway wisdom, will create serious political problems for governors and legislators in the 34 states that declined to set up Obamacare insurance exchanges.  Most of these officials are Republicans, the thinking goes, and will thus be blamed for letting petty partisanship deprive their constituents of subsidies while plunging state insurance markets into chaos.  Public wrath, we are told, will eventually force them to create PPACA exchanges.  However, a new voter survey conducted in the affected states suggests that this is very unlikely to occur.

Obama Can't Ignore Court on Obamacare.  Could the Barack Obama administration really ignore an adverse Supreme Court judgment in the King v. Burwell health-care litigation, as a University of Chicago law professor has proposed?  Of course not.  Obeying the court only with respect to the plaintiffs in this case would be a flagrant violation of the rule of law.  It would put the administration in the position of flouting the court's authority.

Could Obama Bypass the Supreme Court?  It is time to talk about President Obama's contingency plan for health care.  The Supreme Court heard oral arguments earlier this month in King v. Burwell, a case challenging the provision of tax credits on federal insurance exchanges.  While the legal issues are dry lawyers' fare — how to interpret several interconnected phrases of the Affordable Care Act — the practical stakes are high.  The government estimates that millions of Americans will be left without affordable health insurance if it loses.

The Editor says...
The New York Times, official newsletter of the Democratic Party, is trying to sound the alarm about the awful things that will happen in this country after socialized medicine is outlawed.  "Millions" is not a very accurate estimate of the number of people affected.  Medical insurance is not a right, and whether or not it is a necessity or a priority is up to the individual, not the government.

The Sum of All Obamacarian Fears.  If you carefully consider the claims of Obamacare's defenders in King v. Burwell you will discover that their worst fear, sanctimonious pretense notwithstanding, is not the loss of insurance subsidies for some Americans.  The most terrifying prospect for proponents of PPACA is that the Court will let Congress clean up its own mess.  They do not want our elected representatives to have another chance to consider the will of the voters while revising Obamacare.  And this is precisely what will happen if the justices fail to find anything in the law's text permitting subsidies to be distributed via federal exchanges.

Supreme Court tries to make sense of poorly drafted Obamacare language.  Supreme Court justices divided sharply Wednesday [3/4/2015] as they heard a third challenge to Obamacare, grappling with the law's poorly drafted language and trying to decide how broadly Congress intended for the government to pay subsidies to help Americans buy insurance.  The court's more liberal justices offered vocal support for the Obama administration's holistic reading of the Affordable Care Act, saying they believed Congress intended for customers in all of the exchanges to be eligible for tax credits even if their states relied on the federal HealthCare.gov exchange instead.

'L'etat c'est moi': Obama vs. the people.  Indeed, listening to the four liberal justices lay the groundwork for their opinion Wednesday was akin to watching a team of contortionists on "The Ed Sullivan Show" bend themselves into pretzels — all for the sake of avoiding the truth.  It is probably just a matter of time before they vote (with the connivance of Chief Justice Roberts and/or Associate Justice Kennedy) to confirm that the state is whatever Obama declares it to be.  As the Sun King, Louis XIV of France, is reputed to have declared, "L'etat c'est moi."  (The state, it is I.)  Even more relevant in this case is the king's declaration that, "It is legal because I wish it."  That is the position of President Obama and his team of lawyers.  They are arguing essentially that it doesn't matter what the law says.

Laughing at the Death of our Republic.  The WSJ reports that everyone had a good chuckle at the Supreme Court this week during a discussion of the Affordable Care Act.  The government lawyer derided Justice Alito's suggestion that there would be no harm if the Court gutted the system of tax credits offered by the federal government.

Kennedy Won't Save Obamacare's Bacon.  Supporters of the "Affordable Care Act" have been rather glum of late.  Since the Supreme Court agreed to hear King v. Burwell, a lawsuit that challenges the Obama administration's decision to funnel insurance subsidies through federal exchanges established in the 36 states that refused to create PPACA "marketplaces," they have rather ironically bemoaned the possibility that five unelected justices could do irreparable damage to the law with one "wrong ruling." Consequently, they have desperately grasped at a thin straw tossed their way by Justice Anthony Kennedy during Wednesday's oral arguments about the case.

Justice Kennedy Grasps At Straws To Save ObamaCare.  For those who haven't followed the news, the case centers on the question of whether ObamaCare allows subsidies in states that didn't set up their own exchanges.  The language of the law seems painfully obvious that the answer is no.  But during the oral arguments, Kennedy — who will likely be the deciding vote — suggested that he'd found a "federalism" justification to conclude that, whatever the text appears to say, subsidies must be allowed in all 50 states, whether they set up their own exchange or are using the Healthcare.gov site.

Why the Supreme Court will uphold Obamacare again.  The Obamacare law states that health premium subsidies are only supposed to go to poor people who buy insurance in state run exchanges.  The idea was that each state would set up a healthcare exchange but many states refused, so the federal government set up federal exchanges.  The people who are signed up under the federal exchanges are also getting subsidized, even though the wording of the law is very clear that the subsidies should only go "through an exchange established by the state."  Despite this, the Obama administration claims it should apply to federal exchanges as well.  And it looks clear that at least five and possibly six of the nine justices agree.

If Supes Rule Against Obamacare, GOP Must Finish It Off Immediately.  Alas, given the Republicans' general ineptitude — we have to prove we can govern by rolling over for Harry Reid and the minority Democrats! — nothing is a sure bet.  McConnell and Boehner could easily manage to lose a tactical engagement to a Girls Scouts troop marching up Capitol Hill.

How Liberals Are Trying to Intimidate Roberts Court in King v. Burwell Case.  On Wednesday morning, the Supreme Court will hear oral argument in King v. Burwell, a challenge to Obamacare that could gut a core provision of the law.  In the lead up to the oral argument, many Obamacare supporters are attempting to influence the justices, particularly Chief Justice John Roberts, who cast the pivotal vote in the first challenge to Obamacare, National Federation of Independent Business v. Kathleen Sebelius.

Supreme Court arguments end in key ObamaCare case.  The Supreme Court appeared divided Wednesday [3/4/2015] along ideological lines after hearing a challenge of ObamaCare tax subsidies that, if struck down, could affect up to 8 million policy holders.  The liberal justices peppered Michael Carvin, the lawyer for the health law challengers, with skeptical questions almost from the outset over his argument to limit the subsidies.  When Solicitor General Donald Verrilli Jr. — who represents the Obama administration — stepped to the lectern, the liberal justices fell silent, and Justices Samuel Alito and Antonin Scalia took over.

We all win if Supremes gut ObamaCare.  Don't be bamboozled by talk of disaster. Senate Republican leaders indicated on Monday that they'll be ready to provide financial assistance to "help Americans keep the coverage they picked for a transitional period."  Republicans also announced a plan to create "a bridge away from ObamaCare."  Losing in court will force the president to finally negotiate changes to his expensive, unworkable health law.  Suddenly, the politically impossible — compromise on ObamaCare — will become politically inevitable.  Look for big changes in the second half of 2015.

What Is at Stake in the King v. Burwell Case?  The question before the Supreme Court is whether the Obama administration overstepped its authority in issuing an IRS ruling that conflicts with the Obamacare statute.  The statute allows payment of Obamacare subsidies only to individuals who obtain coverage "through an Exchange established by [a] State."  However, the IRS rule allows subsidies to flow to individuals who get coverage through a federally established exchange as well.  This interpretation was made after it became clear that many states were unlikely to set up their own exchanges because of the cost and complexity involved.

Seven Things You Should Know about the IRS Rule Challenged in King v. Burwell.  This week, the Supreme Court considers King v. Burwell.  At issue is whether the IRS exceeded its authority under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act by issuing a final IRS rule that expanded the application of the Act's subsidies and mandates beyond the limits imposed by the statute.  King v. Burwell is not a constitutional challenge.  It challenges an IRS rule as being inconsistent with the Act it purports to implement.  The case is a straightforward question of statutory interpretation.  Here are seven things everyone needs to know about how the IRS developed the rule at issue in King v. Burwell.

King v. Burwell: 4 words and 8 million Americans.  With King v. Burwell to be argued before the Supreme Court on Wednesday, supporters of the Affordable Care Act are rehearsing the same sketchy arguments about the language and history of the healthcare law.

Working the Ref: Law Prof Randy Barnett Details How Media's Lobbying John Roberts.  Georgetown Law professor Randy Barnett has an excellent piece today at the Volokh Conspiracy blog detailing the lengths to which the liberal media is going to not-too-subtly lobby Chief Justice John Roberts on the upcoming ObamaCare subsidy case King v. Burwell.

Is Washington Ready for the Death of Obamacare?  The possibility that the U.S. Supreme Court will soon eliminate federal subsidies for people buying health insurance through the Affordable Care Act is the biggest story in politics and economics that no one wants to talk about.  But the stakes in King v. Burwell, which the court will hear on March 4, could scarcely be higher:  If the plaintiffs prevail, millions of people in 34 states who bought insurance on federal exchanges would suddenly lose the subsidies that make it affordable.  Consequently, most would lose their coverage.

The Editor says...
The idea that someone might lose their coverage is apparently intended to sound like a bad thing — but perhaps these are the people who didn't want coverage and were forced to buy it by the Obamacare law.  In that case, they are being relieved of a burden.

Obama says there's no 'legal basis' for the Supreme Court to dismantle Obamacare subsidies.  President Barack Obama said on Monday [3/2/2015] that he thinks there is no 'plausible legal basis' for the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down a key plank of Obamacare, and also defended his administration's lack of a contingency plan if he's wrong.

The Editor says...
Mr. Obama is suddenly concerned about the "legal basis" for modifications to Obamacare.  Is that irony or is it hypocrisy?

Major Supreme Court challenge threatens to gut Obamacare.  After narrowly surviving a bitter constitutional showdown in 2010, President Obama's Affordable Care Act is once again in serious peril as the US Supreme Court prepares this week to take up a new legal challenge that threatens to gut Obamacare.  A decision in favor of the challengers could block tax credits and render health insurance unaffordable for more than 7 million of the 11 million Americans who have signed up for coverage on healthcare exchanges.  That, in turn, might plunge the president's health care reform effort into a death spiral, according to economists.

King v. Burwell Is Much Bigger Than Obamacare.  [Scroll down]  Specifically, it is about the separation of powers doctrine.  The Constitution grants the power to tax and spend to Congress alone.  Yet the executive branch, under the Obama administration, has brazenly arrogated the power to spend with its IRS rule authorizing the distribution of subsidies through federal exchanges.  The original cert petition filed with the Court on behalf of the plaintiffs phrases it as follows:  "If the ACA means what it says... the IRS is illegally spending billions of taxpayer dollars every month without congressional authority."

Obamacare Ruling May End Civilization As We Know It.  The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in King v. Burwell three weeks from now, and the possibility that the justices might uphold the health care "reform" law as written has driven our liberal friends to the edge of lunacy.  This is never a long journey for anyone on the left, of course, but they have arrived at the precipice with unusual alacrity this time.

Treasury Sec'y Ducks Question: What Will You Do If SCOTUS Guts Obamacare?  How is the Treasury Department preparing for the possibility that the U.S. Supreme Court may strike down Obamacare subsidies for people who buy health insurance on the federal exchanges?  Treasury Secretary Jack Lew repeatedly dodged that question on Tuesday, saying only that "we're continuing to implement the law... as it was written."

Democrats who wrote Obamacare tell Supreme Court to reject lawsuit.  The congressional Democrats involved in writing the Affordable Care Act told the Supreme Court on Wednesday [1/28/2015] that they intended for consumers in all states to be eligible for subsidies, and they argue that the law they drafted reflects that intention.  Opponents have challenged the Obama administration's enforcement of the law, arguing that it only allows subsidies to be paid in states that set up their own exchanges, but not to customers in most of the country who use the federal exchange.

White House just assuming they'll win Obamacare case at SCOTUS.  King v. Burwell, the court case that will determine if Obamacare's language about federal subsidies and their availability on exchanges "established by the state", will be heard in oral arguments at the Supreme Court on March 4, with a decision to come down later this year.  The Obama White House is apparently so confident that they'll win the case that they're not preparing any back-up plan in case the Supreme Court wrecks the structure of their signature legislation.

Supreme Court rejects ObamaCare challenge from doctors' group.  The Supreme Court on Monday [1/12/2015] rejected a 2-year-old legal challenge to a central provision of ObamaCare from a conservative doctors group.  The case, which was led by the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, sought to strike down the law's individual mandate, which fines individuals who fail to purchase health insurance.

Progressives To SCOTUS: Do The Right Thing And Ignore The Constitution.  If the Supreme Court dismantles a core provision in Obamacare, America will be plunged into a pre-2010 levels of dystopia — or worse.  If Democrats are forced by the court to follow the law they wrote, then 36 states that aren't interested in hosting federal "exchanges" would no longer be forced to do so and, consequently, the American Dream would be shattered.  So, needless to say, the pending Supreme Court challenge over the Affordable Care Act via King v. Burwell is the most significant decisions since Hobby Lobby or perhaps Citizens United — or whenever the last time it was the world was going to come tumbling down around us.

A SCOTUS decision gutting Obamacare could cause widespread disruptions.  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.

Let States Dare to Make Health-Care Mistakes.  The death of Vermont's effort to install single-payer health care is revealing — and not only for what it says about the feasibility of such government-run systems in the U.S.  It also shows conservatives a way forward if the Supreme Court voids broad swaths of the Affordable Care Act in 2015.  In King v. Burwell, the court will consider a challenge to the legality of Obamacare subsidies distributed in states using the federally run health-insurance exchange.  The law states the subsidies may be distributed only through exchanges "established by the states."  But the Obama administration has argued for a broader reading permitting the distribution of subsidies to individuals living in states using the federal exchange.

An Exit Ramp from Obamacare.  The Supreme Court should rule that the Obama administration has exceeded its legal authority by providing tax credits for people who buy health insurance on exchanges run by the federal government.  No legislation authorizes those credits.  If the Court ends the illegal credits, though, it will leave millions of Americans without affordable coverage — and also leave politicians who oppose Obamacare in a bind.

Federal judge says Obama executive action on immigration is unconstitutional.  President Barack Obama's new plan to spare 4.7 million illegal immigrants from the threat of deportation violates the U.S. Constitution, a federal judge declared on Tuesday, handing down the first legal ruling against the plan.  Judge Arthur Schwab's ruling has no immediate impact, since the Obama administration says there was no reason for his Western District of Pennsylvania court to address the issue in the case, which concerns the legal status of 42-year-old Honduran immigrant Elionardo Juarez-Escobar.

Federal judge's surprise ruling finds Obama amnesty orders 'unconstitutional'.  Judge Arthur J. Schwab of the Western District issued an unusual judicial memorandum [12/16/2014] acknowledging that a president has discretionary powers deciding how to enforce laws.  But Judge Schwab said Obama's executive action immigration policies go far beyond that and establish an entire system for granting legal protections to wide groups of individuals, illegal immigrants.  The judge said Obama's edicts grant "substantive rights" to illegals.

Welcome to lawless Obama's America, hombres!  Just when President Obama thought it was safe to show his face in an American courtroom again, in walks John Wayne in a black robe to deliver one of the greatest legal beatdowns ever suffered by a sitting president.

Federal judge finds Obama amnesty is unconstitutional.  A federal judge Tuesday [12/16/2014] ruled parts of President Obama's deportation amnesty to be unconstitutional, with a scathing memo dismantling the White House's legal reasoning and arguing that Mr. Obama tried to steal Congress' lawmaking powers.

District court declares Obama immigration action unconstitutional.  Earlier Tuesday [12/16/2014], a federal court in Pennsylvania declared aspects of President Obama's executive actions on immigration policy unconstitutional.  According to the opinion by Judge Arthur Schwab, the president's policy goes "beyond prosecutorial discretion" in that it provides a relatively rigid framework for considering applications for deferred action, thus obviating any meaningful case-by-case determination as prosecutorial discretion requires, and provides substantive rights to applicable individuals.  As a consequence, Schwab concluded, the action exceeds the scope of executive authority.

ObamaCare Supporters Should Be Very Worried, Experts Say.  What would happen if the Supreme Court rules that ObamaCare doesn't allow subsidies through the federal exchange?  There's plenty of speculation, ranging from no big deal to absolute, total catastrophe.  An article published on Wednesday [12/10/2014] in the New England Journal of Medicine tries to answer the question with a little bit more precision.  It's conclusion, however, is that disallowing those subsidies would be a devastating blow to ObamaCare.  The case — King v Burwell — centers on language in the statute which says that federal tax subsidies meant to offset the cost of ObamaCare insurance can only be provided through state-run exchanges.  The plaintiffs in the case make a strong argument that the law is pretty clear on this.

Almost Half of Country Now Suing Obama over Immigration.  With four additional states joining "a Texas-led coalition suing the Obama administration over executive action on immigration," almost half of the nation is now suing the federal government on the issue.  Arkansas, Michigan, North Dakota and Oklahoma are the latest to join the effort, bringing the total to 24 "fighting the order in a federal district court in Brownsville."

What's at Stake in the Little Sisters of the Poor Case Against Obamacare.  For 175 years, the Little Sisters of the Poor have been inspired by their faith to take care of the elderly poor.  But now the federal government wants them to choose between their faith and their ministry and is pushing hard in federal court to force them to decide.  The stakes couldn't be much higher for people who care about and enjoy religious liberty.

Could King vs. Burwell Save Democrats from Obamacare?  If you accept that [...] certain Democrats are beginning to realize that Obamacare is a political albatross that will only worsen with time ... Will certain Democrats secretly hope that the Supreme Court rules in King v. Burwell that the text of the law only allows for subsidies on state-run exchanges, and that the IRS cannot allow subsidies on federal exchanges?  That decision would effectively destroy Obamacare.

Suit on Health Law Puts Focus on Funding Powers.  In mounting the latest court challenge to the Affordable Care Act, House Republicans are focusing on a little-noticed provision of the law that offers financial assistance to low- and moderate-income people.

I'll bet they do.
Democrat Wants Gag Order On Liberal Lawyer Representing GOP In Obamacare Lawsuit.  Self-avowed liberal law professor Jonathan Turley is representing the House GOP in its lawsuit against President Barack Obama's implementation of Obamacare and at least one House Democrat wants him punished for it[.]  Turley, a George Washington University law professor, is also a frequent media commentator on political issues.  Despite describing himself as a political liberal, he's long been harshly critical of Obama's use of executive power and said he'd jumped at the chance to represent the House GOP in the lawsuit against unilateral changes to the Affordable Care Act in its implementation.

Priests for Life Will Appeal HHS Mandate Court Decision to Supreme Court.  Father Frank Pavone objects to the decision on November 14, written by Obama-appointee Judge Cornelia Pillard, in which the court upheld the Obama administration's most recent "accommodation" for religious employers who object to being forced by the government to provide free contraception, sterilization procedures, and abortion-inducing drugs to employees through health insurance plans.

Four words that could deep-six Obamacare.  The most serious challenge to President Obama's health care law since it survived the Supreme Court by a single vote in 2012 isn't a balky website, public opinion or the Republican takeover of Congress.  It's the Supreme Court — again.  In a case likely to be heard in March and decided in June, the justices will dissect the meaning of four words on page 95 of the 906-page Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act — four words that could render health insurance premiums unaffordable for millions of Americans.

House Republicans sue president over Obamacare.  House Republicans on Friday announced their long-anticipated lawsuit to challenge President Obama's unilateral actions on his healthcare law.  The lawsuit contends the president overstepped his legal authority when he acted alone to wave the Affordable Care Act's employer mandate and the penalties for failing to comply with it.  The lawsuit was filed against the departments of Health and Human Services and the Treasury.

House GOP File Lawsuit Against Obama.  House Republicans on Friday [11/21/2014] filed a long-awaited lawsuit accusing President Barack Obama of overstepping his executive authority when implementing his signature health care law.  And though the suit is centered on the Affordable Care Act, the GOP moved on the legal action the morning after the president announced he will unilaterally grant temporary relief to millions of undocumented immigrants.

William Levin: The Road to Repeal.  Exactly what is the significance of King v. Burwell, the high profile Obamacare tax subsidy case docketed for decision by the Supreme Court in its Term ending June 30, 2015?  Legally, a reversal by the Court will eliminate the authority to pay subsidies to individuals purchasing health care on the federal exchange, meaning that an estimated 5.4 million people will no longer be eligible to receive a subsidy check averaging $4,700.  Taxpayers will save $25 billion, but otherwise the outcome does not sound of overwhelming policy significance.

How to Prepare for Obamacare's Collapse.  Several million Americans could find their health insurance becoming vastly more expensive if the Supreme Court rules against the Obama administration in a pending case.  That's what the court should do [...] but the elected branches of government need to develop contingency plans to deal with the affected people.  The problem is the fault of the administration and its supporters.  Obamacare, their most cherished accomplishment, authorizes tax credits to help people buy insurance on exchanges established by state governments.  Because political resistance to the law has been longer-lasting and more widespread than advocates anticipated, however, 36 states didn't establish exchanges.

Obamacare's foundation of lies a warning for new Supreme Court case.  A leading architect of Obamacare admitted that Democrats gamed the bill's budget score and misled the public on the bill's taxes in order to pass it, proclaiming that "Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage" for Obamacare supporters.  It's not news that Obamacare was built on lies.  We've known it for years.  But as we enter into a public debate over another Obamacare case at the Supreme Court, it's important to keep in the front of our minds the willingness of the law's advocates to mislead for what they believe is a good cause.

It's How They Wrote the Law.  The Democrats argue that if the Supreme Court insists on the letter of the law, then the results will be absurd.  Of course they will:  This is an absurd law, a Frankenstein's monster sewn together from spare parts gathered from the graveyard of big-government health-care schemes.  The Democrats passed the Affordable Care Act without a single Republican vote and without Republican input — it says what it says because that is the way they wrote it.  Even if Democratic legislators are not very deft at crafting legislation, it is not the responsibility of the Supreme Court to bail them out.

The Supreme Court Really Might Destroy Obamacare This Time.  The Supreme Court is taking up another Obamacare case — one that could devastate the health care law's coverage expansion.  The justices on Friday agreed to hear oral arguments in King v. Burwell, a lawsuit that challenges the insurance subsidies at the heart of the Affordable Care Act.  The suit argues that the subsidies — which roughly 80 percent of Obamacare enrollees received — should only be available in a handful of states.

Will Chief Justice Roberts get a do-over?  The Supreme Court this week in King v. Burwell acted swiftly and before completion of lower court appeals on the issue as to whether the language of the Obamacare statute limits subsidies to those states that have set up their own exchanges.

Four Reasons the Supreme Court Is Likely to Rule against the Obama Administration in Burwell.  The Supreme Court followed up the landslide election on Tuesday with its own shocker:  it announced that it will hear the Burwell case, which challenges the Obama administration's extension of insurance subsidies in states that do not have health-care exchanges.  I think the chances are high that the administration will lose.

If Words Mean Anything Obamacare Is In Real Trouble.  The survival of Obamacare depends on the ability of government bureaucrats to dole out tax credits and subsidies, but the law stipulates that all such assistance must be dispensed via exchanges established by the state.  Likewise, the law's employer mandates can only be imposed by state-created exchanges.  Oddly enough, however, PPACA doesn't actually require states to set up exchanges.  And, much to the surprise and chagrin of the Obama administration, 34 states declined to do so.  This forced the federal government to set up exchanges in those states and also spawned the legally dubious IRS edict.

Obamacare returns to Supreme Court.  The issue of subsidies on the federal exchange has been accepted by the Supreme Court. [...] The 4th Circuit case was contrary to the initial decision of the D.C. Circuit in the Halbig case.  That panel decision later was vacated when the entire D.C. Circuit agreed to en banc review.  Many observers thought that the lack of a circuit split would cause the Supreme Court to decline to take the case, but obviously that was wrong.

The New York Times appears to be deeply concerned about the future of Obamacare:
What's at Stake in Supreme Court's Latest Health Care Case.  Unlike the Obamacare case the Supreme Court decided in 2012, the one it took Friday, King v. Burwell, isn't a threat to the entire Affordable Care Act.  But it could be a threat to health insurance that the law has provided to millions of Americans in 36 states.  The law set up tax credits to help Americans afford premiums in new health insurance marketplaces.

Supreme Court Agrees To Hear New Challenge To Obamacare.  At issue in this case is the legality of subsidies offered to help millions of low- and middle-income people buy health insurance.  Opponents argue that most of the subsidies are illegal.

Supreme Court will take up Obamacare challenge that threatens to cut off subsidies.  The Supreme Court agreed Friday to hear a new challenge to President Barack Obama's health care law that would threaten federal subsidies that help millions of low- and middle-income people afford their health insurance premiums.  The justices said they will review a unanimous federal appeals court ruling that upheld Internal Revenue Service regulations that allow health-insurance tax credits under the Affordable Care Act for consumers in all 50 states, regardless of whether they signed up through their state exchanges or through the federal healthcare site.

In surprise, Supreme Court to hear challenge to healthcare subsidies.  The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to take up a new challenge to ObamaCare that Democrats fear could dismantle the healthcare law.  The case, King v. Burwell, rests on whether the federal government can legally hand out healthcare subsidies in 34 states that have opted out of creating their own exchanges.  About 87 percent of people enrolled in ObamaCare receive the subsidies.

Court Rules in Favor of Ave Maria School of Law Against HHS Mandate.  A federal court has ruled in favor of Ave Maria School of Law in the case Ave Maria School of Law v. Burwell.  This means that as of now the school is not required to comply with the HHS Contraception mandate and distribute contraceptives and abortion-causing drugs to its employees.  Ave Maria School of Law is a Catholic law school and was seeking an injunction to delay implementation of the mandate.

ObamaCare and the Language of Law.  On Sept. 30, Judge Ronald A. White of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Oklahoma delivered his decision in Pruitt v. Burwell, the third of four related cases to have received a judgment.  The four cases challenge the IRS ruling that ObamaCare subsidies will be given to policyholders who have purchased health insurance in exchanges established by the federal government.  Like the verdict in Halbig v. Burwell, Judge White found for the plaintiffs and against the IRS, and he vacated the IRS regulation pending appeal.  The other case to have received a judgment is King v. Burwell, which found for the government.  So we have a 2-1 split.  The U.S. Supreme Court must eventually weigh in.

Obamacare Again On SCOTUS To Do List.  The Supreme Court begins a new term today, which means the justices will soon have to decide whether to hear King v. Burwell, a lawsuit challenging an arbitrary IRS edict that tax credits and penalties will be issued through federally created Obamacare exchanges.  It is always risky to make predictions about the Court, but it is quite plausible that the justices will accept this case.  Two federal courts, including one in Oklahoma last week, have already declared the IRS decree unconstitutional and the Roberts Court has demonstrated a marked aversion for the very kind of bureaucratic lawmaking that provoked this lawsuit.

Judge: IRS Obamacare Rule 'Is Arbitrary Capricious, and Abuse of Discretion'.  In his decision, U.S. District Judge Ronald White concluded Tuesday that the IRS rule altering the Obamacare law and providing billions in subsidies is "arbitrary, capricious and abuse of discretion":  "The court holds that the IRS rule is arbitrary, capricious, and abuse of discretion or otherwise not in accordance with law, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 706(2)(A), in excess of summary jurisdiction, authority or limitation, or short of statutory right, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 706(2)(C), or otherwise is an invalidation of the ACA [Affordable Care Act], and is hereby vacated.  The court's order of vacatur is stayed, however, pending resolution of any appeal from this order."  In September 2012, Oklahoma was the first of several states to challenge the legality of an IRS rule that caused billions in subsidies to be paid out, despite Congress having never authorized those payments.

Judge rules against White House on Affordable Care Act.  A federal judge in Oklahoma has ruled that Obamacare subsidies cannot go to residents of states that are not running their own insurance exchanges, a second blow to the Obama administration on a issue that threatens a key element of the health law's coverage expansion.  Judge Ronald A. White said that the administration's decision to allow subsidies to go through either a state-run health insurance exchange or the federal exchange is an improper and invalid reading of the Affordable Care Act and must be struck.

GAO says Obama administration can't bail out insurers without Congress.  The Department of Health and Human Services cannot legally bail out the insurance industry for excessive losses through President Obama's health care law unless the U.S. Congress approves language allowing the administration to do so, according to a legal opinion released on Tuesday by the Government Accountability Office.  The ruling could end up provoking a showdown between the White House and Congressional Republicans over Obamacare that has the potential to affect health insurance premiums.  At issue is the "risk corridors" program, which aims to stabilize the insurance market on the new health insurance exchanges during the early years of Obamacare.

7th Circuit dumps doctors' challenge to IRS enforcement of Obamacare.  A conservative physicians group and a Wisconsin member that had challenged an IRS plan to collect the penalty from individuals who don't get health insurance under the Affordable Care Act lost again Friday in a federal court.  The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago affirmed a Wisconsin federal judge's decision to dismiss a lawsuit filed last October by the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, Inc., and Robert T. McQueeney, who treat patients on a cash basis, and want to prevent everyone from being covered by health insurance.

West Virginia Attorney General Suing White House Over Obamacare.  West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey is suing President Barack Obama's administration over allegations of hand-picking which laws to follow.

DC Circuit Court Will Rehear Obamacare Subsidies Case.  The D.C. Circuit Court will hear the court case over the legality of Obamacare subsidies in the federal exchanges all over again, the court announced Thursday [9/4/2014].  At risk are premium tax credit subsidies for Obamacare customers using federally-run exchanges.  The text of the Affordable Care Act which authorizes the subsidies states that the funding should go only to customers in exchanges "established by the State," leading the plaintiffs in Halbig v. Burwell to argue that subsidies are illegal for federal HealthCare.gov customers — which account for the vast majority of Obamacare enrollees nationwide.

Appeals Court Will Rehear an Obamacare Challenge.  The future of Obamacare subsidies in 36 states will be reconsidered in court — this time in a situation more favorable for the White House.  The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit announced Thursday [9/4/2014] that it will reconsider a three-judge panel's July decision eliminating insurance subsidies for coverage bought on the federal exchange.

Could a wording 'glitch' doom Obama's healthcare law?  When a federal appeals court ruled last month that a seemingly arcane wording flaw in the Affordable Care Act should invalidate a central part of the law, many of those who drafted the statute five years ago reacted with shock and anger. [...] The judges from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit based their ruling on language saying that subsidies would be offered for health policies bought through an "exchange established by the state."  That wording meant only marketplaces established by 14 states, including California, would qualify, the three-judge panel ruled; 5 million people in 36 states where consumers used the federal government's exchange should not get subsidies.

Obamacare challengers to D.C. Circuit: Let Supreme Court decide where subsidies should flow.  Obamacare challengers have asked a federal appeals court to stand down and let the Supreme Court decide whether the government may give subsidies to people who used the federal health exchange, a standoff that threatens to upend the health overhaul.  The Court of Appeals for the Circuit of the District of Columbia previously ruled against President Obama in a 2-1 decision that said subsidies may only flow to health exchanges set up by states, based on a phrase in the Affordable Care Act that suggests that is what Congress intended.  The ruling invalidated an IRS rule that extended subsidies to exchanges in every state.

Judge: Indiana can sue IRS over health care rules.  A federal judge has ruled Indiana and nearly 40 state school districts can sue the Internal Revenue Service over rules it imposed to implement the federal health care overhaul.

Plaintiffs in ObamaCare Subsidy Case Appeal to Supreme Court.  The plaintiffs in a case challenging ObamaCare's insurance subsidies on the federal exchange have asked the Supreme Court to take their case after a circuit-court panel ruled against them.  The plaintiffs in the case, King v. Burwell, argue that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) plainly states that such subsidies, in the form of refundable tax credits, are available only to taxpayers "covered by a qualified health plan ... enrolled in through an Exchange established by the State under section 1311 of the [ACA]."  Taxpayers in states that chose not to establish their own exchanges, therefore, are not eligible for subsidies, the plaintiffs contend.

Don't Impeach Obama, Censure Him.  The House's lawsuit against the White House for altering Obamacare dozens of times without consulting Congress is fine as far as it goes, but we need to make more use of the power of censure by Congress.  In addition, a lawsuit could take years to wend its way through the courts and might not even be resolved until Obama leaves office.

Administration appeals ruling that struck down ObamaCare subsidies.  The Obama administration on Friday [8/1/2014] appealed the ruling that some subsidies under ObamaCare are illegal.  The Justice Department filed a petition with the full D.C. Circuit Court asking the judges to review the ruling in Halbig v. Burwell that overturned some of the subsidies distributed to help people pay for health insurance.  The 2-1 ruling dealt a major blow to the healthcare law, and if allowed to stand could demolish one of the pillars of the Affordable Care Act.

ObamaCare may be headed to Supreme Court — again.  The high court has been asked to review a July 22 ruling by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals that declared constitutional all federal subsidies granted to enrollees of the health care system.  The losing plaintiff in the case officially appealed the ruling in a petition Thursday [7/31/2014] to the Supreme Court.  The Fourth Circuit ruling contradicted another announced hours earlier by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia that ruled the IRS went too far in extending subsidies to those who buy insurance through the federally-run exchange, known as HealthCare.gov.

Halbig Shows How Leftist Wonks Just Aren't Very Good At Their Jobs.  Another day, another liberal wonkblogger contradicting the government's position in the Halbig case.  First we had Jonathan Gruber demonstrating that the plaintiff's case in Halbig was quite plausible.  Then we had Jonathan Gruber demonstrating that the plaintiff's case in Halbig was quite plausible... again.  Then we had Greg Sargent unwittingly demonstrating that the plaintiff's case in Halbig wasn't only plausible, but quite likely.  Today [7/31/2014], thanks to Phil Kerpen of American Commitment, we have Jonathan Cohn, one of the Left's foremost experts on Obamacare, contradicting himself and demonstrating that the plaintiff's case in Halbig was plausible.

Halbig is an Opportunity for Supreme Court to Rededicate Itself to Rule of Law.  True, the Halbig case, if it makes its way to the Supreme Court, will present an opportunity for Chief Justice John Roberts to redeem himself from his abominably activist salvation of Obamacare.  But more important, it will be an opportunity for the high court to reaffirm this nation's commitment to the rule of law.  In Halbig v. Burwell, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals held that under the Affordable Care Act federal health insurance subsidies are available for policies purchased only on state exchanges and not those purchased on the federal exchange.

Obama Democrats Lose Their Big Bet on Health Exchanges.  Words mean what they say.  That's the basis for the decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in Halbig v. Burwell invalidating the Internal Revenue Service regulation approving subsidies for Obamacare consumers in states with federal health insurance exchanges.  The law passed by Congress, Judge Thomas Griffith explained, provided for subsidies in states with state-created exchanges, but not in states with federal exchanges.  That's factually correct, and under the Constitution, the government can't spend money not authorized by Congress.  This has not prevented Democrats from calling the decision "judicial activism," which makes as much sense as the claims that the Supreme Court decision overturning the Obamacare contraception mandate cuts off all access to contraception.

The Flip-Flopping Architect of the ACA.  Last week, the D.C. Circuit ruled that the Obama administration has been implementing Obamacare illegally.  Days later, a video featuring the law's chief architect confirmed the court's ruling and raised questions about whether administration officials knew they were breaking the law all along.  Jonathan Gruber is the MIT economist who helped congressional Democrats write the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in 2009.  He has been sharply critical of Halbig v. Burwell, a lawsuit alleging the Obama administration is illegally subsidizing health insurance for 5 million Americans in the 36 states with exchanges established by the federal government.

ObamaCare's Insider Testimony.  As Jonathan Gruber will tell you, the MIT economist helped to write ObamaCare and remains one of its fiercest defenders.  So it's no surprise that on Friday [7/25/2014] the Web was full of chatter that Mr. Gruber had at least twice made public assertions that support the latest legal challenge to the health law.  The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last week in Halbig v. Burwell that the plain language of ObamaCare says that subsidies for health insurance can only be delivered through state, not federal, exchanges.

Obamacare Architect Jonathan Gruber Once Again Ties Subsidies to State-Based Exchanges.  Did Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber make the same mistake twice?  A new audio clip finds him once again explaining that Obamacare subsidies are tied to state health exchanges.  A clip of Jonathan Gruber circulated last night in which he states that Obamacare subsidies are tied to the existence of state exchanges.  This statement is extremely problematic for the law's supporters because it appears to confirm the view of plaintiffs in the Halbig case, i.e. that only state-exchanges were intended to deliver subsidies.

Obamacare Architect Argued Years Ago That States Without Exchanges Can't Get Subsidies.  One of Obamacare's authors said in 2012 that states that don't set up their own Obamacare exchanges can't offer residents subsidies, throwing heavy weight behind the argument that the billions in subsidies to federally-run exchanges are illegal.  Earlier this week two appeals courts heard arguments that the Affordable Care Act's language doesn't allow for subsidies in federally-run exchanges but answered the question differently.  While the D.C. District Court of Appeals first found that the subsidies are illegal for the 36 states that didn't create their own exchanges, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals said otherwise.

Supreme Court may not protect Obamacare this time.  Are health-care consumers entitled to subsidies if they buy coverage on insurance exchanges established by the federal government, as they are with insurance from state exchanges?  Two federal appeals courts have reached contradictory conclusions, at least so far.

Democrats still haven't learned Obamacare lesson.  Memo to Democrats:  This is what happens when you pass a law where you can't fix simple drafting errors.  Within hours of each other, two federal courts reached exactly opposite conclusions Tuesday [7/22/2014] about whether the vague wording of Obamacare allows people to get subsidies through the federal health insurance exchange.  One said, sorry, that's not what the law says.  The other said, sure, they can get the subsidies — the Obama administration has the power to do that.

Why the Halbig Decision Should Be Taken Seriously.  On Tuesday [7/22/2014], the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia struck down the subsidy provisions of the Affordable Care Act for states that have not implemented their own exchanges.  The court found that the plain wording of the statute made clear that Congress authorized subsidies only in exchanges established by a state, and that the federal government is not a state.  Thus, subsidies are not authorized in exchanges established by the federal government.

Key House panel OKs resolution to sue president for Obamacare delays.  The Republican-led House is set to take up a measure next week that authorizes Speaker John A. Boehner to sue President Obama over how he implemented parts of Obamacare, adding to the many legal squabbles that surround the health care overhaul this summer.  The House Committee on Rules voted 7-4 along party lines Thursday [7/24/2014] to advance the resolution despite Democrats' complaints that the lawsuit is a "political stunt" designed to whip up the Republican base ahead of November's midterm elections.

Will John Roberts Decide a 'State' Is Not a 'State'?  On the face of it, this question may seem absurd.  In fact, given any level of reflection, it is absurd.  The federal government is not one of the states.  But this absurd question was at the heart of Halbig v. Burwell, decided this week by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, and it could soon become a defining issue in American life.  Section 1311 of the Affordable Care Act, the court explained, provided for "each State" to establish an exchange to sell health insurance.  However, the federal government cannot force a state government to create a health insurance exchange.

ObamaCare in death spiral after federal appeals court strikes down some subsidies.  The ruling in Halbig v. Burwell bars the federal government from handing out taxpayer-funded subsidies to people who buy ObamaCare plans in nearly two-thirds of the states.  Those subsidies took the sting out of being forced to buy pricey ObamaCare plans.  If the ruling sticks, buyers in those states will have to pay full price, on average a whopping four times the subsidized price they paid this year.  Quadrupling the price would likely trigger a mass exodus out of the plans,causing what the insurance industry calls a "death spiral."  The ruling by the influential appeals court for the District of Columbia also chastised the Obama administration for rewriting the law to suit its own ends.

D.C. appeals panel deals big blow to Obamacare subsidies.  In a decision that could blow a massive hole in President Obama's signature domestic achievement, the court held that people living in states that relied on the federal government to set up their insurance market exchanges cannot offer the subsidies considered critical to making coverage affordable.  The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the administration used an IRS rule to stretch the meaning of the Affordable Care Act, which said financial aid to to low- and middle-income people should only flow to exchanges "established by the State."  If that means only state-run exchanges, it would cut off subsidies to two-thirds of the nation.

Obamacare Slowly Succumbs to Its Birth Defects.  The supporters of the ironically titled "Affordable Care Act" are attempting to downplay their latest legal defeats by pretending that they are disappointing but inconsequential stumbles in the law's long march toward the pantheon of nanny state entitlements.  These people are whistling past the graveyard.  In fact, the president's "signature domestic achievement" is moribund.  It is a congressional crack baby afflicted with multiple organ failures caused by the Democrat addiction to corrupt bargains and unconstitutional edicts.  Yesterday's [7/22/2014] appeals court ruling against the Obama administration unequivocally confirms that reality.

Appeals court strikes major blow to Obamacare.  A federal appeals court delivered a serious setback to President Barack Obama's health care law Tuesday, potentially derailing billions of dollars in subsidies for many low- and middle-income people who bought policies.

Federal Appeals Court Deals Blow to Health Law.  President Barack Obama's health care law is snarled in another big legal battle, with two federal appeals courts issuing contradictory rulings on a key financing issue within hours of each other Tuesday [7/22/2014].

White House To Ignore Court Ruling, Keep Handing Out Obamacare Subsidies.  The Obama administration will continue handing out Obamacare subsidies to federal exchange customers despite a federal court's ruling Tuesday that the subsidies are illegal.  A D.C. Court of Appeals panel ruled Tuesday morning that customers in the 36 states that didn't establish their own exchange and use HealthCare.gov instead cannot be given premium tax credits, according to the text of the Affordable Care Act itself.

Fed appeals court panel says most Obamacare subsidies illegal.  In a dramatic split decision, two federal appeals panels disagreed Tuesday [7/22/2014] on the legality of Obamacare subsidies that gave billions of dollars to help 4.7 million people buy insurance on HealthCare.gov.  A panel of the appeals court that covers Washington, D.C., ruled 2-1 that the subsidies were and are illegal if issued through that federal exchange, as opposed to one set up by a state.  But about two hours later, a Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel ruled 3-0 in another case that the subsidies are legal for people who buy plans on HealthCare.gov, which the federal government operates in 36 states.

Federal appeals court invalidates some ObamaCare subsidies, in blow to health law.  Two federal appeals court rulings put the issue of ObamaCare subsidies in limbo Tuesday [7/22/2014], with one court invalidating some of them and the other upholding all of them.  The first decision came Tuesday morning from a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.  The panel, in a major blow to the law, ruled 2-1 that the IRS went too far in extending subsidies to those who buy insurance through the federally run exchange, known as HealthCare.gov.  A separate federal appeals court — the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals — hours later issued its own ruling on a similar case that upheld the subsidies in their entirety.

D.C. Court of Appeals strikes Obamacare federal insurance exchange subsidy regulation.  What problems does this create?  Massive.  All the millions of people who signed up for Obamacare on the federal exchange — and the true numbers were disputed — expecting to get tax credits as subsidies now will not get those subsidies.  A year-long effort to get people to sign up for Obamacare on the federal exchange will be in peril.

If Halbig Stands, What Happens to Obamacare?  With the D.C. Circuit Court's decision today that Obamacare, as written, doesn't authorize the provision of subsidies on federal health-care exchanges — it just does so for those established by states — residents of 36 states may stop receiving insurance subsidies under the law.  President Obama could well ignore the decision, which he asserts is perfectly legal, but he'll also certainly appeal it — either to an en banc hearing of the D.C. Circuit Court (more judges than the three that just heard it) or to the Supreme Court.  If the president chooses to ignore the ruling, we can bet a messy legal battle — and maybe even an impeachment attempt — will ensue.

Federal Court Strikes Down Obamacare Subsidies in 36 States.  A federal court on Tuesday [7/22/2014] struck down health insurance subsidies for people in the 36 states that did not set up their own Obamacare exchanges.  The ruling "is a repudiation of Obamacare and all the lawlessness that has come with it," Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) tweeted shortly after a three-judge panel in Washington, D.C. issued its ruling in Halbig v. Burwell.  While the ruling is a "significant victory for the American people & rule of law... we must not rest," Cruz added.

Halbig v. Burwell Would Free More Than 57 Million Americans From The ACA's Individual & Employer Mandates.  The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, often described as the second-highest court in the land, could rule on Halbig v. Burwell as early as tomorrow [7/22/2014].  Halbig is one of four lawsuits challenging the legality of the health-insurance subsidies the IRS is dispensing in the 36 states that did not establish a health-insurance Exchange under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, or "ObamaCare," and thus have Exchanges established by the federal government.  Though the PPACA repeatedly states those subsidies are available only "through an Exchange established by the State," and there are indications IRS officials knew they did not have the authority to issue subsidies through federal Exchanges, the IRS is dispensing billions of dollars of taxpayer subsidies through federal Exchanges anyway.

Obamacare in chaos as federal court strikes down tax credits for low-income Americans.  The future of Obamacare was uncertain today after a federal court in Washington, D.C. struck down tax subsidies for Americans who bought insurance through federally-funded exchanges.  Within hours the same policy was held up by another court, setting up a Supreme Court showdown.  The cases revolve around four words in the Affordable Care Act, which says the tax credits are available to people who enroll through an exchange 'established by the state.'

Obamacare's Biggest Legal Threat.  The legal positions of President Obama's Justice Department have been slapped down unanimously a remarkable 13 times in the Supreme Court in the last two years.  Over and over, even Obama's own two appointees to the court — Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan — have held that the president has exceeded his authority and violated the separation of powers.  This coming week, we could see the second-highest court in the land rule that the administration broke the law in enforcing a key provision of Obamacare, calling into question once again Obama's fidelity to the Constitution — and further endangering his signature program.

Court decision looms in subsidy challenge that could unravel ObamaCare.  A few blocks down the street from where the U.S. Supreme Court recently issued its ruling in the Hobby Lobby case, a powerful federal appeals court is preparing its own decision in a case that could cause serious complications for ObamaCare.  The case, Halbig v Sebelius, is a major legal challenge that cuts to the heart of the Affordable Care Act by going after the legality of massive federal subsidies and those who benefit from them.

Why Obamacare As We Know It May Not Survive.  Obamacare could take another spin in front of the Supreme Court — with vastly uncertain consequences.  Harvard legal scholar Laurence H. Tribe warned Tuesday of a "very high risk" that a crucial aspect of Obamacare — its government subsidies provision — could fall victim to a major legal challenge being mounted by conservatives.  That is why, he also said, that the Supreme Court will almost certainly get "a second bite of the apple" in determining the fate of President Obama's signature health law, with uncertain consequences.

Obama's Law Professor: 'I Wouldn't Bet' on Obamacare Surviving Next Legal Challenge.  President Obama's old Harvard Law professor, Laurence Tribe, said that he "wouldn't bet the family farm" on Obamacare's surviving the legal challenges to an IRS rule about who is eligible for subsidies that are currently working their way through the federal courts.  "I don't have a crystal ball," Tribe told the Fiscal Times.  "But I wouldn't bet the family farm on this coming out in a way that preserves Obamacare."  The law's latest legal problem is that, as written, people who enroll in Obamacare through the federal exchange aren't eligible for subsidies.

Forget Hobby Lobby — This Case Could Wreck Obamacare.  A federal appeals court might be on the verge of blowing a massive hole in the foundation of Obamacare.  The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit is expected to rule any day now in a lawsuit that aims to block the law's insurance subsidies in more than half the country.  If the challengers ultimately prevail, the Affordable Care Act's complex framework could begin to unravel as millions of people lose financial assistance.  For now, the stakes are a lot higher than the odds of success — challenges to the insurance subsidies have a 0-2 record in federal courts.  But the pending D.C. Circuit ruling may be the one to break that streak, according to legal experts on both sides of the issue.

Get ready for an even bigger threat to Obamacare.  Now that the Supreme Court has issued its ruling in the Hobby Lobby case, the legal fight over the Affordable Care Act will shift a few blocks away to another Washington courtroom, where a far more fundamental challenge to Obamacare is about to be decided by the powerful U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.  Indeed, if Hobby Lobby will create complications for Obamacare, Halbig vs. Burwell could trigger a full cardiac arrest.

Supreme Court issues long-awaited ruling in birth-control dispute.  The administration cannot force closely held private corporations to pay for contraception in their health insurance plans if it violates their religious beliefs, a divided Supreme Court ruled Monday, dealing a political and logistical setback to President Obama's signature law.

Obama's Hobby.  In the latest stinging First Amendment brushback to President Obama, the Supreme Court on Monday [6/30/2014] held the contraceptive mandate unlawful as applied to companies such as Hobby Lobby.  Mark Rienzi, the Becket Fund lawyer who represented Hobby Lobby:  "The Court confirmed that Americans don't give up their religious freedom when they open a family business."  Contrary to the hysterica (e.g., the White House press secretary's claim the ruling "jeopardizes the health of women") the decision does not limit access to contraceptives.  All it means is that employees cannot demand they be provided — free — by family businesses with religious objections.

Can the Legislative Roots of Obamacare Overturn the Law?  The legal battle over the Affordable Care Act continues, as a challenge to the healthcare reform law aims to nullify it by arguing that any taxes imposed by the law originated in the wrong place.  Sissel v. United States Department of Health and Human Services was filed in the Washington D.C. District Federal Court — a traditional stepping-stone to the U.S. Supreme Court — by the Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF) on behalf of Matt Sissel, an Iowa artist and small-business owner. Sissel, an Iraq war veteran, does not have or want health insurance, preferring to use the money to invest in his business.

MRC Files Unique Challenge to ObamaCare Mandate.  The MRC contends that under ACA rules it has self-certified as a religious organization and is therefore exempt from the mandate.  The MRC is the first organization that has asked the court to affirm its "self-certification."  For nearly three decades, the MRC has been the nation's premier defender of pro-life views and Judeo-Christian values from attacks by the liberal media. Bozell and other employees of the MRC practice and live by Judeo-Christian values, and believe abortion, whether through the actions of an abortionist or a drug, is the taking of innocent human life.

New bid to topple Obamacare in court.  The Affordable Care Act is back at center stage in the courts on Thursday [5/8/2014] with yet another legal challenge that aims to derail President Obama's massive health care reform law.  Rather than attacking the individual mandate or the so-called contraceptive mandate, this lawsuit challenges a legislative maneuver used by Senate majority leader Harry Reid (D) of Nevada to pass the bill five years ago.  The little-noticed legal battle is being waged by a conservative public interest law group, the Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF).  It seeks to enforce a constitutional command:  "All bills for raising revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives."

Group Claims Obamacare Unconstitutionally Imposes New Taxes.  A Sacramento-based law firm is challenging President Barack Obama's health care law, claiming it imposes new taxes unconstitutionally.

Obamacare's doom.  If the president wants to witness a refutation of his assertion that the survival of the Affordable Care Act is assured, come Thursday he should stroll the 13 blocks from his office to the nation's second-most important court, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.  There he can hear an argument involving yet another constitutional provision that evidently has escaped his notice.  It is the origination clause, which says:  "All bills for raising reveornue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with amendments as on other bills."

How the ACA Could Collapse.  Some time in the coming months, the Supreme Court will hand down its opinion in Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby, the case of the retailer that claims that its religious freedom or that of its employees is violated by contraceptive coverage required as part of the Affordable Care Act.  The attitude of the health-care act's supporters toward such cases is irritation.  How dare a little religious case trip up the mighty Affordable Care Act and jeopardize the ACA's establishment as permanent law of the land?  Cases involving religious details, however, do have a way of stopping big social legislation, and not only because they violate the principles of the religious denominations involved.

Senator Says Congressional Staff a Roadblock in Getting Support for Obamacare Lawsuit.  A Wisconsin senator said he felt some staff of GOP House members were standing in the way of getting more support for his lawsuit against President Obama's executive overreach.  On Monday [4/21/2014], Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) filed an answer to the government's motion to dismiss his lawsuit over the Obama administration's special Obamacare treatment of Congress and its staff.  "The Office of Personnel Management's rule restoring tax preferred congressional health care subsidies that the Affordable Care Act eliminated reflects a stunning disregard for the law.  On Jan. 6, 2014, I filed suit to overturn this executive overreach and uphold the rule of law.  This is just one example of the more than 20 unilateral changes made by the president to his own signature piece of legislation, but it was the one opportunity where I believe I had standing to challenge," he said in a statement.  "The administration does not want this case to have its day in court, and as a result, asked the court on March 17 to dismiss my case due to lack of standing."

38 Republican lawmakers put aside differences for lawsuit challenging legality of Obamacare.  Thirty-eight Republican lawmakers, including such unlikely bedfellows as John McCain of Arizona and Ted Cruz of Texas, have joined to support a lawsuit challenging the legality of the Affordable Care Act and accusing the president of repeatedly ignoring the law he signed for political reasons.  The lawmakers have signed onto a legal brief in support of a lawsuit filed by Sen. Ron Johnson, the Wisconsin Republican who is asking a federal court to overturn Obamacare's special treatment for members of Congress and their staffs.  "The unlawful executive action at issue in this case is not an isolated incident," the brief states.  "Rather, it is part of an ongoing campaign by the executive branch to rewrite the Affordable Care Act on a wholesale basis."

Christian broadcaster Dobson wins temporary ObamaCare mandate injunction.  Christian radio broadcaster James Dobson has won a temporary injunction preventing the federal government from requiring his ministry to include the morning-after pill and other emergency contraception in its health insurance.

Little-Known Legal Challenge That Could Torpedo Obamacare.  While the Supreme Court considers one challenge to a provision of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), a federal appeals court located just blocks away is contemplating a separate challenge that could have much more dire consequences for the future of the law.  "What you're asking for is to destroy the individual mandate, which guts the statute," Judge Harry T. Edwards of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia said to an attorney representing the challengers during a hearing on March 25.  The case — Halbig vs. Sebelius — was heard by Edwards and two other judges and they are expected to rule in the coming months.

Is ObamaCare a Law?  Coming in the week the White House wheeled out its 38th rewrite of the law, Halbig v. Sebelius is even more important for the contours of executive power and the rule of law.  The case asks whether the Affordable Care Act, which limits insurance subsidies to "an Exchange established by the State," also authorizes subsidies for the 36 exchanges established by the federal government.  The courts tend to give the executive branch deference in interpreting ambiguous statutes, but here the Administration is asking the court to declare that the statute unambiguously means the opposite of what the plain language says.

It's time for White House to start sweating over legal challenge to Obamacare subsidies.  As the U.S. Supreme Court weighed the constitutionality of a contraception coverage mandate Tuesday morning, a federal appeals court heard a separate legal challenge that could have much more sweeping implications for the future of President Obama's health care law.  And if the oral arguments before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit are any indication, it's time for the White House to start sweating over a lawsuit that up until now has flown relatively below the radar.

DC Circuit to Decide Whether Obama Administration Can Rewrite Laws.  On Tuesday the a [sic] three judge panel on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals will be hearing Halbig v. Sebelius, one of the more important legal challenges to ObamaCare's legally problematic implementation.  What the plaintiffs are asking is pretty straightforward — they want the judges to direct the Obama Administration to faithfully execute the plain language of the statute that Congress passed and the president signed.

Justices sound ready to reject contraceptives mandate under Obamacare.  The Supreme Court's conservative justices sharply criticized part of President Obama's healthcare law Tuesday [3/25/2014], suggesting they will rule later this year that requiring Christian-owned corporations to offer their employees contraceptives coverage violates the freedom of religion.  "Your reasoning would permit requiring profit-making corporations to pay for abortions," Justice Anthony M. Kennedy told U.S. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli, who defended the contraceptives provision of the Affordable Care Act.

ObamaCare's Latest Legal Challenge.  A defining feature of President Obama's second term is his willfulness in defying limits on executive power to suit his political goals, and no more so than with the Affordable Care Act.  The judiciary is the last check on those abuses, and this week it will have another opportunity to vindicate the rule of law.  On Tuesday the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals will hear one of the more important legal challenges to ObamaCare's lawless implementation.  Unlike the challenge to the individual insurance mandate, Halbig v. Sebelius involves no great questions of constitutional interpretation.  The plaintiffs are merely asking the judges to tell the Administration to faithfully execute the plain language of the statute that Congress passed and President Obama signed.

Supreme Court Deeply Skeptical of Obamacare 'Abortion Mandate'.  Several justices sharply questioned Obamacare's "abortion mandate" today [3/25/2014] at the Supreme Court, and five justices — a majority of the court — appeared deeply skeptical of the controversial regulation at issue.  Chief Justice John Roberts — who turned out to be the swing vote in Obamacare's first foray at the Court — expressed strong disagreement with several of the Obama administration's arguments about legal protections for religious companies facing a mandate to provide contraceptives against their beliefs.

Sects and Drugs.  It is likely to be another three months before the U.S. Supreme Court decides whether the government is obliged to grant a religious exemption from ObamaCare's birth-control mandate to companies whose owners object to it on religious grounds.  Tomorrow the justices hear oral arguments in the two cases that raise that question, Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores and Conestoga Wood Specialties Corp. v. Sebelius.  But already some on the left think they've caught Justice Antonin Scalia in a contradiction.  They haven't.

Florida Doctor sues to stop Obamacare executive orders — and might win.  Larry Kawa, an orthodontist in South Florida, is suing to stop Obama from implementing executive orders without the approval of Congress — and he might win. ...] Too often, citizens see Congress and the President do something outrageous, but feel powerless to stop it. Kawa's case proves that we're not — and it's time for more of us to take action.

Halbig v. Sebelius: Roundup Of Pro-Plaintiff Amicus Briefs In "The Most Significant Existential Threat" To ObamaCare.  Halbig v. Sebelius and three related cases are, in the words of one prominent ObamaCare supporter, "probably the most significant existential threat to the Affordable Care Act."  The goal of these lawsuits is to stop the IRS from creating a $700 billion entitlement without Congress.  If ObamaCare cannot survive without such egregious executive overreach, perhaps it does not deserve to survive.

Seattle Children's Hospital Sues State over 'False Promise' in Obamacare.  The Seattle Children's Hospital is suing Washington state's insurance commissioner over a "failure to ensure adequate network coverage" in the insurance exchanges established as part of the Affordable Care Act.  "We're seeing denials in care, disruptions in care.  We're seeing a great deal of confusion and, at times, anger and frustration on the part of these families who bought insurance thinking that their children would be covered," a doctor with the hospital said.  "And, in fact, it's a false promise."

Supreme Court schedules hearing on birth control mandate.  The Supreme Court has scheduled the argument on the so-called contraceptive mandate in the Obamacare law for Tuesday, March 25.  That's when the court will hear the challenges brought by two businesses whose owners say providing contraceptive care would violate their religious beliefs.

GOP senator sues over Obamacare subsidies for Congress.  Sen. Ron Johnson said Monday he will ask the courts to make sure that Congress is treated the same way regular Americans are treated in the Obamacare marketplace, even if it means taking away his colleagues' health care subsidies, because the financial aid is not in the Obamacare law they passed in 2010 and forces taxpayers to pay for part of lawmakers' premiums.

Senator Ron Johnson: I'm Suing Over ObamaCare Exemptions for Congress.  On Monday, Jan. 6, I am filing suit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin to make Congress live by the letter of the health-care law it imposed on the rest of America.  By arranging for me and other members of Congress and their staffs to receive benefits intentionally ruled out by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the administration has exceeded its legal authority.

Sen. Johnson files lawsuit to eliminate ObamaCare subsidy for Congress.  Sen. Ron Johnson told Fox News' Megyn Kelly Monday he decided to sue the Obama administration over the subsidy for lawmakers in the president's health care law because it is unfair to give members of Congress special treatment.  Johnson, R-Wis., said the subsidy creates a double standard that favors members of Congress and their staff over other Americans, and should be eliminated.

Sen. Johnson will go to court to challenge Obamacare subsidies for Congress.  Under the health care law, members of Congress and their employees were kicked off their federal health plan and forced to buy insurance through an Obamacare exchange.  But unlike other Americans going through the exchanges, they will receive federal subsidies to pay for coverage, regardless of their income.

Press Conference Announces Georgia Obamacare Nullification Bill.  In response to a citizen petition of 34,000 signatures, four Georgia lawmakers have drafted HB 707 to nullify the implementation of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare).  Representatives Jason Spencer, David Stover, Michael Caldwell and Scot Turner held a press conference on Dec. 16 [2013] to discuss the bill and request support.

Judicial Watch Asks Court to Invalidate Unconstitutional Obamacare Power Grab.  [O]ur out of control president recently rewrote Obamacare for the 14th time by eviscerating, through sheer fiat, the individual mandate.  The disruption will be massive.  Americans who followed the law will be made once again into suckers, and Establishment DC will tsk-tsk.  Congressional Democrats are stricken by their Obamacare disaster, so they do nothing in the face of Obama's acting on as a "one-man Congress."

All too soon, ObamaCare will give us 'Standing'.  Despite all the weeping and wailing on every media outlet, ObamaCare has not given us "standing" for the obvious reason that it has not actually affected anyone yet.  All those insurance cancellations take effect some time in 2014.  All those additional costs will be felt starting in 2014 and escalating from there.  All that care denied or deferred will happen next year and beyond.

Obama has shown how a future GOP president can gut Obamacare.  Having watched President Obama and Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius over the past several months unilaterally alter or outright ignore major portions of the law, I now believe that a future Republican president would have greater latitude to gut Obamacare than I once thought possible.

Notre Dame re-files ObamaCare lawsuit.  The University of Notre Dame on Tuesday refiled a lawsuit contesting the controversial birth control mandate under ObamaCare.  The school said it believes the requirement that it provide its employees birth control as part of their insurance coverage impinges on its religious beliefs and that efforts by the Obama administration to find a solution would not resolve the issue.

ObamaCare's Next Legal Challenge.  As millions of Americans see their health-insurance premiums increase, have their coverage dropped as a result of the Affordable Care Act, and are unable to use the federal exchange, Oklahoma has sued the Obama administration.  The Sooner State and several others are trying to stop the government from imposing tax penalties on certain states, businesses and individuals in defiance of the law.

The Origination Clause III: ObamaCare's a Good Amendment to Die Hard.  In June 2013, Judge Beryl Howell of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia dismissed the Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF)'s case that ObamaCare violates the Constitution's Origination Clause.  This clause reads, "All bills for raising revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with amendments as on other Bills."  PLF's lawsuit alleged that ObamaCare violates the Origination Clause's first half because the Senate and not the House originated ObamaCare, a bill that raises revenue by billions of dollars.

Nuclear Option 'Greatly Eroded' Graham's Leverage to Get Benghazi Answers.  "President Obama is committed to protecting Obamacare, his signature achievement, regardless of the damage done to millions of Americans," he continued.  "He is even willing to throw the judiciary into chaos if necessary.  Any American who wants to bring a legal challenge to the thousands of Obamacare rules and regulations lost big today."

Dems reveal 2014 strategy: Smash and grab.  With Democrats poised to lose control of the Senate, this could be a very big deal.  With new regulations set to ban more policies and the prospect of millions of Americans being dumped from their employer-based health insurance, next fall promises to be a painful season for ObamaCare implementation.  But by delaying the start of the enrollment season, the White House may be able to push some of the outrage past Election Day and perhaps spare vulnerable Democrats.

Obamacare's Fifth Amendment Problem.  [A]t the very least a citizen has a right to defend their interests.  But what if a citizen's defense is that compliance with the state's legal mandate is impossible?  Interestingly, that is a not a novel legal question.  In a number of contexts, the Supreme Court and lower federal courts have raised due process concerns in the face of impossibility, especially state-created impossibility.

Fed appeal panel says Citizens United might end Obamacare's HHS mandate.  Citizens United, the 2010 Supreme Court ruling that bolstered political speech against campaign finance reform limitations, may also mean trouble for Obamacare's contraception coverage mandate, according to the second-highest court in the country.  Attorneys for Francis and Philip Gilardi argued that the Gilardis should not be required to provide contraception to their employees because it violates their religious beliefs.  The Gilardis own Freshway Foods and Freshway Logistics in Ohio and are devout Catholics.  They argued that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act protects them from having to comply with the mandate, promulgated by the Department of Health and Human Services.

A Second Federal Court Green-Lights Lawsuit Against Obamacare.  A second federal judge Thursday [10/31/2013] has ruled a lawsuit that challenges a major IRS Obamacare regulation could proceed despite the government's objections.  A ruling by a judge in Richmond today mirrored that of a federal judge in the District of Columbia last week.  The judge denied plaintiffs' request for a preliminary injunction, he ordered briefs filed by the first week of December, which would allow him to issue a decision by the end of the year.

ObamaCare Is Not Settled Law — It's Still In Court.  [Scroll down]  But no law is settled in our system [...] and that includes ObamaCare.  Even as Washington debates delaying implementation of the individual mandate for a year, a U.S. district court has refused to dismiss a legal challenge to the Democrats' reform.  This is not some petty complaint but a sober legal issue that "has the potential to sink ObamaCare," Cato Institute health policy analyst Michael Cannon said this week in the Los Angeles Times.  "It could make the current website problems seem minor by comparison," he said.

How the Court Case Against Obamacare Subsidies Stacks Up.  Last week, the most important case that you've never heard of survived its first legal hurdle.  Judge Paul Friedman of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that plaintiffs had standing to advance a broadside attack on the subsidy system at the heart of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, colloquially known as Obamacare.

More legal trouble for Affordable Care Act.  If computer glitches are not enough of a problem, President Obama's healthcare law also has a legal glitch that critics say could cause it to unravel in more than half the nation.  The Affordable Care Act proposes to make health insurance affordable to millions of low-income Americans by offering them tax credits to help cover the cost.  To receive the credit, the law twice says they must buy insurance "through an exchange established by the state."

Obamacare site could mean legal fights.  If the Obamacare enrollment website seems like a tangled mess, just wait for the lawsuits.  The potential for a morass of litigation over who's responsible for the problems that have plagued the rollout of President Barack Obama's signature health care law is significant, government procurement experts say.

Federal judge suddenly green-lights lawsuit that could stop Obamacare in its tracks.  A federal judge on Tuesday [10/22/2013] refused to dismiss a case that could fatally cripple the Obamacare health insurance law.  The Affordable Care Act forbids the federal government from enforcing the law in any state that opted out of setting up its own health care exchange, according to a group of small businesses whose lawsuit got a key hearing Monday in federal court.

The Suit Against Obamacare Subsidies Could Be Very Bad for Obamacare.  On Tuesday [10/22/2013] a federal judge denied a request from the Justice Department to dismiss a lawsuit aiming to block health care subsidies in states not running their own healthcare exchange sites.  Put another way, if the plaintiffs in Halbig v. Sebelius win this case, low- and middle-income individuals in 34 states won't get subsidized health care.  The only good news for people expecting those subsidies is that the judge, U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman, decided not to block the subsidies while the case moves forward.

Federal judge set to rule on Obamacare subsidies quandary.  A federal judge will decide Tuesday on a case that could blow a major hole through the Obamacare exchanges when he rules on whether the government can dole out tax credits to Americans whose states declined to run their own Affordable Care Act insurance markets.  U.S. District Court Judge Paul L. Friedman heard oral arguments Monday [10/21/2013] and said he would rule Tuesday morning on the challenge by seven plaintiffs, who want an injunction from the rule that extends credits to all of the exchanges.  He will also rule on the government's attempt to kill the lawsuit.

ObamaCare's Original Sin.  Democrats tell us that ObamaCare is "the law of the land," and that the Supreme Court declared it constitutional, and that we should get used to it — it's here to stay.  Actually, the Court found ObamaCare unconstitutional on two counts, but let it pass anyway.  The problem for defenders of ObamaCare is that its court challenges just keep coming.  One place to check up on them is the website Health Care Lawsuits.

IRS Sued Because Obama Amended Obamacare Unconstitutionally.  Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, sued the IRS and the Treasury Department because Barack Obama unlawfully amended Obamacare without Congress.  That caused harm to Dr. Kawa who has 70 employees and made financial expenditures to meet the employer mandate.  There are numerous other companies across the USA that did the same.  Obamacare has already caused millions of job losses nationwide.  More are anticipated.  The majority of Americans have opposed Obamacare because it costs more and has inferior health care.

Delay of ObamCare's employer mandate draws legal challenge.  The Obama administration broke the law when officials decided to delay a crucial provision of the president's signature healthcare law, according to a lawsuit filed Tuesday [10/1/2013] in federal court.  The lawsuit, filed by the conservative group Judicial Watch on behalf of an orthodontist from Florida, seeks to block a one-year delay of the Affordable Care Act's (ACA) employer mandate.

Republicans: Take ObamaCare to Court.  Republicans shouldn't defund ObamaCare.  They should insist it be implemented to the letter of the law — and file a lawsuit in court to do just that.

Supreme Court to Consider New Obamacare Case.  Obamacare is before the U.S. Supreme Court again.  On Thursday [9/19/2013], Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) lawyers filed the first viable petition for Supreme Court review involving Kathleen Sebelius' HHS Mandate, which requires employers to provide abortion-related insurance coverage, even if those employers have a religious objection to abortion.  Section 1001 of the Affordable Care Act (ACA, or Obamacare) requires all large employers to offer "preventive services" to their employees or face enormous financial penalties.

S.C. Senate to debate proposed state law challenging constitutionality of Obama national health care plan.  A cohort of conservative lawmakers in Columbia would like to respectfully disagree with the U.S. Supreme Court.  The group is arguing that President Barack Obama's health care plan isn't constitutional, or at least it shouldn't be in South Carolina.

Court challenges could tear down major pieces of ObamaCare.  President Obama's healthcare law is under attack in the courts even as the administration sprints toward full implementation.  Despite surviving a stiff challenge at the Supreme Court last year, some of the law's biggest provisions remain at risk from legal challenges.

Lawsuit over health care tax could kill 'Obamacare'.  "Obamacare" looks increasingly inevitable, but one lawsuit making its way through the court system could pull the plug on the sweeping federal health care law.  A challenge filed by the Pacific Legal Foundation contends that the Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional because the bill originated in the Senate, not the House.  Under the Origination Clause of the Constitution, all bills raising revenue must begin in the House.

Judge halts contraceptive mandate for Mich. firm.  U.S. District Judge Lawrence Zatkoff ruled Sunday [12/30/2012] in favor of Tom Monaghan and his Domino's Farms Corp., near Ann Arbor.  Monaghan, a devout Roman Catholic, says contraception isn't health care but a "gravely immoral" practice.

MSM Gives Us the Mushroom Treatment on HHS Mandate.  The most recent victory against HHS and its egregious anti-conscience mandate came last Friday, when the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals issued an injunction preventing the government from enforcing the mandate against an Illinois company called Korte & Luitjohan Contractors.  And it delivers a potentially deadly blow to the administration's most pernicious argument — that secular, for–profit employers are not entitled to the same First Amendment protections enjoyed by strictly religious institutions like churches.  The American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), which represents Korte & Luitjohan Contractors, also represents a company called American Pulverizer.

Founder Of Domino's Pizza Sues Govt Over Obamacare Contraception Mandate.  Adding Domino's Pizza to the growing list of private entities fighting the feds over the HHS contraception mandate, the company's founder filed suit on Friday [12/14/2012].

Two More Legal Victories For Opponents Of Obamacare Contraception Mandate.  You won't hear much about it from the "news" media, which will focus on the Supreme Court's rejection of a long-shot injunction request by Hobby Lobby, but the opponents of ObamaCare's contraception mandate are stacking up victories in the courts.  In addition to winning three injunctions against the government since last summer, the opponents of the HHS mandate had big wins in New York and Washington, D.C. just this month.

Obamacare dead on arrival in 2013, part 1.  Both sides of the Obamacare controversy requested Judge Roger Vinson (U.S. District Court for Northern Florida) to address the legislative history of the Act.  The Court found that the bill originated in the U.S. Senate.  See Florida v. U.S. Department of Health & Human Services. F. Supp.2d-, 2011 WL285683 (N.D. Fla.2011) which documents that the House of Representatives were not amending a Senate Bill, but instead found the "Act" to have originated in the Senate.  That distinctly violates Article 1, Section 7 of the U. S. Constitution rendering the "Act" "null and void."

Domino's Founder Files Lawsuit Challenging HHS Mandate.  Tom Monaghan, founder and former owner of Domino's Pizza, is the latest business owner to file a lawsuit challenging Obamacare's Health and Human Services (HHS) mandate requiring employers to cover abortion-inducing drugs, contraception, and sterilization as "preventive services" in their health care plans.

Domino's founder sues feds over health care law.  The founder of Domino's Pizza is suing the federal government over mandatory contraception coverage in the health care law.

The Opening for a Fresh ObamaCare Challenge.  ObamaCare is being implemented, having been upheld as constitutional by the Supreme Court in June in a series of cases now known as National Federation of Independent Business v. HHS.  It is becoming increasingly clear, however, that the court took a law that was flawed but potentially workable and transformed it into one that is almost certainly unworkable.  More important, the justices also may have created new and fatal constitutional problems.

New York Judge Slaps Down Obama Justice Department.  The Obama administration has been consistently arguing, since announcing a year's grace period for some religious organizations to figure out how to violate their consciences and obey the HHS mandate, that the controversy over religious freedom and the mandate is over and the Catholics are happy.  That, as has been pointed out here before, ignores all the lawsuits pending.  And that they are not just from Catholics.

Supreme Court revives Christian college's Obamacare challenge.  The Supreme Court has revived a Christian college's challenge to Obamacare.  Monday [11/26/2012], the High Court granted a petition for rehearing of Liberty University's challenge to President Barack Obama's signature health care legislation, ordering the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., to take the case.

This is an original compilation, Copyright © 2021 by Andrew K. Dart

Feds cap fines for not buying health insurance.  Federal officials have capped the amount of money scofflaws will be forced to pay if they don't buy insurance this year at $2,448 per person and $12,240 for a family of five.

Sen. Mike Lee: Justice Roberts' Obamacare ruling was 'a betrayal of his judicial oath'.  Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, was disappointed when the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Obamacare.  One year later — having thought about the case, gotten some distance from the issue, reviewed the ruling opinion — he's confident of one thing:  Chief Justice John Roberts engaged in "a betrayal of his judicial oath," one that amounts to "a form of tyranny."

Obamacare's Ozymandian Ruins.  All the sound and fury produced by the Democrats last week about impeachment drowned out a useful lesson concerning their last great act of legislative hubris.  On Wednesday, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals declared Obamacare's insurance mandate unconstitutional, and on Friday, President Trump signed a budget package that repeals three of that law's most outrageous taxes.  These are just the latest fragments to fall on the growing pile of debris lying at the foot of Obamacare's crumbling edifice.  The ruins already contain dozens of provisions repealed by Congress, struck down by the courts, or rescinded by executive order.  If you are frowning at your screen, wondering why the hated mandate is being relitigated when Congress has already eliminated its penalty, this is just the latest attempt to reconcile the tortured reasoning of Chief Justice John Roberts with the Constitution and common sense.

Obamacare's Ozymandian Ruins.  On Wednesday [12/18/2019] the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals declared Obamacare's insurance mandate unconstitutional and, Friday, President Trump signed a budget package that repeals three of that law's most outrageous taxes.  These are just the latest fragments to fall on the growing pile of debris lying at the foot of Obamacare's crumbling edifice.  The ruins already contain dozens of provisions repealed by Congress, struck down by the courts, or rescinded by executive order.

While everyone was focused on impeachment, 5th Circuit cut the legs out from under Obamacare.  A year ago almost to the day, we reported that a Texas federal judge (1) held that the Obamacare individual mandate was unconstitutional after Congress repealed the mandate tax (which was the justification for the Supreme Court upholding the mandate in 2012), and (2) the mandate was not severable from the rest of the law, so the entire law fell.  It was a full defeat of Obamacare[.]

Court finds Obamacare mandate unconstitutional, sends case back to lower court.  A federal appeals court on Wednesday [12/18/2019] struck down Obamacare's individual mandate in a decision that immediately thrusts the health care law to the forefront of the 2020 elections.  However, the appeals court ruling largely ducked the central question of whether the rest of the Affordable Care Act remained valid after Congress removed the penalty for not having health insurance.  The three-judge panel instead sent the case back to a Texas federal judge, who previously threw out the entire law, to reconsider how much of Obamacare could survive.

Three Major Obamacare Taxes Bite the Dust.  House Democrats, forced by a budget deadline to divert a little energy from impeachment to their primary legislative function, have reluctantly negotiated a spending agreement with congressional Republicans and the White House.  The bill, which must be passed by the Senate and signed by the president before federal funding runs out this weekend, contains some good news for Americans facing ever-increasing medical expenses.  It permanently repeals three looming Obamacare taxes:  the medical device tax, the tax on premium (Cadillac) health plans, and the health insurance tax (HIT).  All three were unpopular and would have increased health-care costs.

Another Round of Strange Bedfellows on Severability in Texas v. U.S..  Earlier today [4/1/2019], I joined three other academics — Nicholas Bagley, Abbe Gluck, and the VC's own Ilya Somin — in submitting an amicus brief to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in Texas v. U.S. explaining how Judge Reed O'Connor bungled the severability analysis when concluded that the alleged unconstitutionality of an uneforced individual mandate requires invalidation of the entire Affordable Care Act (ACA).  To the contrary, under existing severability doctrine, Judge O'Connor should have left the rest of the law completely intact.

The DOJ Just Delivered A Major Blow To Obamacare.  The Department of Justice on Monday [3/25/2019] sided with U.S. District Court Judge Reed O'Connor's previous ruling that the Affordable Care Act, commonly referred to as Obamacare, is unconstitutional.  Judge O'Connor's ruling came in December but the DOJ is just now solidifying the decision.  According to O'Connor's December ruling, the ACA's individual mandate is unconstitutional, which makes the entire piece of legislation invalid.

Voters Side With Judge Who Nullified Obamacare.  One day after Nancy Pelosi and her modest but all too real Democratic majority in the House of Representatives voted to interfere in Texas v. United States, the lawsuit in which Federal Judge Reed O'Connor ruled Obamacare unconstitutional, a new survey found that nearly six in ten registered voters want O'Connor's ruling to stand.  Of that number, 27% say the law should be eliminated so we can return to the way things were before Obamacare was shoved down our unwilling throats, and 31% agree that it should be invalidated so it can be replaced by a program that works.

Texas Judge Doubles Down on Obamacare Ruling.  Over the holiday weekend, U.S. District Judge Reed O'Connor issued an order reiterating his December 14 decision to strike down Obamacare.  As expected, he also stayed enforcement of his ruling to allow time for a challenge in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals by a group of Democrat-controlled states led by California Attorney General Xavier Becerra.  Most "news" reports focused exclusively on the stay, which comprises one page of the document, while ignoring twenty-nine pages that Judge O'Connor devotes to a detailed elucidation of his previous ruling.

Ambiguity and American Jurisprudence.  On December 14, Judge Reed O'Connor of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas ruled that ObamaCare is unconstitutional, despite the fact that the Supreme Court had twice ruled that the ACA is constitutional.  What's changed is that the 2017 tax law "eliminated" the Individual Mandate.  And because the mandate is its central funding mechanism and is not severable from the rest of the act, the whole shebang must be tossed on the scrapheap of history.  However, those who think the ACA a very bad piece of legislation shouldn't get their hopes up.

A Federal Judge Finally Exposes The Lies At The Heart Of Obamacare.  No serious person has ever doubted that the individual mandate was unconstitutional, because no possible reading of the Commerce Clause could support such an outlandish scheme.  As the late Justice Antonin Scalia noted during oral arguments before the Supreme Court in 2012, if the government can force you to buy health insurance under the Commerce Clause, it can also force you to buy broccoli, or a car, or pretty much anything.  Allowing the individual mandate under the Commerce Clause powers would give Congress unlimited authority to regulate almost every aspect of our lives.

Federal Judge Rules Obamacare Unconstitutional.  Friday evening [12/14/2018], a federal Judge issued a ruling that Obamacare apologists have been dreading since Texas v. United States was filed by 20 states in the Northern District of Texas early this year.  U.S. District Judge Reed O'Connor agreed with the plaintiffs that the Affordable Care Act's individual mandate was rendered unconstitutional when Congress reduced its tax-penalty to zero.  He further agreed with their assertion that the mandate is not severable from the rest of the statute.  Consequently, Judge O'Connor declared the entire health care law invalid.

Obamacare Unconstitutional, Now What?  "Compromise has an incredibly small constituency," retiring Representative Trey Gowdy reflected in a parting-thoughts interview with Fox News Channel's Martha McCallum.  He lamented a prevailing, partisan mindset that it only takes 51 percent to govern.  Entering Congress by riding the Republican wave that followed the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act without a single GOP vote, Gowdy in some sense owes his congressional career to the hyperpartisanship he laments.  But that congressional career coinciding with the inability of his party to win over Democrats to repeal Obamacare during his tenure shows that one-way-street legislating eventually becomes a two-way street, with the closed-mindedness of one side begetting closed-mindedness on the other side.

Federal judge in Texas strikes down Affordable Care Act.  A federal judge in Texas struck down the Affordable Care Act on Friday night [12/14/2018], ruling that former President Barack Obama's signature domestic legislation has fallen down like a losing game of "Jenga."  But the White House said that with the ruling expected to be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, the law will remain in place for now.  U.S. District Judge Reed O'Connor in Fort Worth sided with the argument put forward by a coalition of Republican-leaning states, led by Texas, that Obamacare could no longer stand now that there's no penalty for Americans who don't buy insurance.

Good Riddance to Obamacare.  Is there anybody currently breathing who actually understands the details of Obamacare?  Nancy "You Have to Pass It in Order to Understand It" Pelosi certainly didn't and I doubt she does now, even as she presumably ascends once more to speaker of the House.  Maybe Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel — the putative architect of the ACA — does, but he was about as intelligible as a Martian speaking Sanskrit when trying to explain it on television.

Federal judge in Texas strikes down ObamaCare.  A federal judge in Texas on Friday [12/14/2018] struck down the Affordable Care Act, throwing a new round of uncertainty into the fate of the law just one day before the deadline to sign up for coverage for next year.  U.S. District Court Judge Reed O'Connor ruled that the law's individual mandate is unconstitutional, and that because the mandate cannot be separated from the rest of the law, the rest of the law is also invalid.  The ruling is certain to be appealed, and legal experts in both parties have said they ultimately expect the challenge to the health law will not succeed.  ObamaCare will remain in effect while the case is appealed.

Oh good!  Another blow to the nightmare of Obamacare.  Bit by bit, like the monument to Ozymandias chipped away by shifting desert sands, the Obamacare monolith is coming down.  Friday, a Texas court struck down the law as "unconstitutional" based on Congress repealing the individual mandate in 2017.  Rick Moran wrote about it [elsew]here.  For those of us stuck in the individual market with no choice but to buy the hellish Obamacare, that's a relief.

Trump Administration Wins Key Obamacare Lawsuit.  A federal appeals court has handed the Trump administration a major victory by ruling against an insurance company whose lawyers claimed the taxpayers owed it $214 million in Obamacare subsidies.  Moda Health Plan had sued the government, claiming that it was owed the money pursuant to the law's "risk corridor" program.  The Trump administration argued that it couldn't legally disperse the funds because doing so would have violated an explicit congressional requirement that this particular subsidy program remain budget neutral.  A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit agreed with the Trump administration.

States Win Another Major Case Against Obamacare.  In a decision that has gotten almost no media attention, six states led by Texas have won another round against the Obama administration implementation of Obamacare.  On March 5, Texas federal Judge Reed O'Connor threw out the Obama administration's imposition of a federal fee or tax on states as a condition of continuing to receive Medicaid funds.  O'Connor ruled that the fee violates the nondelegation doctrine of the Constitution and the requirements of the Administrative Procedure Act.  The 2010 Obamacare law imposed a "health insurance providers fee" on medical insurers to help pay for the subsidies provided by the federal government to individuals purchasing health insurance.  However, the law specifically exempted states from having to pay this fee.

Can 'Texas v.  United States' Set Us Free From Obamacare?  Ignore everything you have been told by the "news" media about Texas v.  United States, the lawsuit recently filed by 20 states challenging the constitutionality of Obamacare.  The Fourth Estate, in its all but official role as the public relations department of the Democratic Party, has generally downplayed the suit as yet another futile attempt by fanatical Republicans bent on destroying former President Obama's "legacy."  Following their usual playbook for reporting constitutional challenges to the "Affordable Care Act" the media briefly sneered about its merits and then, to paraphrase David Burge, "covered the story with a pillow."  It is nonetheless an important case and it's useful to review the basis on which the plaintiffs actually base their case against the mandate:  In 2012, a majority of the Supreme Court's justices — including Chief Justice Roberts — rejected the government's claim that Congress could impose the individual mandate pursuant to the Commerce Clause of the Constitution.  Yet Roberts held that the mandate was still constitutional because its penalty was a tax collected by the IRS to raise revenue.  The plaintiffs argue that this "saving construction" evaporated when Congress reduced the penalty to zero last year.

Siding With Trump, Judge Clears Way for Trial Over Health Subsidies.  A federal judge sided with the Trump administration on Wednesday [10/25/2017] in a ruling against 18 states that sought to compel the federal government to pay subsidies to health insurance companies for the benefit of millions of low-income people.  "It appears initially that the Trump administration has the stronger legal argument," Judge Vince Chhabria of Federal District Court in San Francisco wrote in the ruling.  He refused to issue a preliminary injunction requested by the states, leaving the dispute to be resolved in a trial in his courtroom over the next few months.

Judge Backs Trump on Obamacare Subsidies.  [Xavier] Becerra was joined by 18 other Democrat AGs in a lawsuit, California v.  Trump, filed in the Northern District of California for the purpose of forcing the Trump administration to pay the subsidies.  Today [10/25/2017], in a 29-page ruling, Judge Chhabria sent them packing with a flea in their ear.  On Monday, the Judge presided over a 90-minute hearing in which he treated the attorney for the plaintiffs like a rather slow-witted toddler.  Judge Chhabria, an Obama appointee, pointed out such inconvenient fact that nearly all of the states involved in the lawsuit had already ensured that the majority of enrollees would not be harmed by Trump's decision to halt the payments.

Federal judge rules Obamacare is being funded unconstitutionally.  House Republicans won Round 2 in a potentially historic lawsuit Thursday [5/12/2016] when a federal judge declared the Obama administration was unconstitutionally spending money to subsidize health insurers without obtaining an appropriation from Congress.  Last year, U.S. District Court Judge Rosemary Collyer broke new ground by ruling the GOP-controlled House of Representatives had legal standing to sue the president over how he was enforcing his signature healthcare law.  On Thursday, she ruled the administration is violating a provision of the law by paying promised reimbursements to health insurers who provide coverage at reduced costs to low-income Americans.

The Courts Finally Get One Right On ObamaCare.  The bad news for ObamaCare just got worse, as U.S. District Court Judge Rosemary Collyer ruled that the administration has been improperly paying for one of the subsidy programs.  But this case is about much more than how ObamaCare is financed.

House GOP wins Obamacare lawsuit.  In a major victory for Republicans, a federal judge ruled that the Obama administration didn't fund Obamacare's subsidies properly.  The judge said Thursday [5/12/2016] that the subsidy program will remain in place pending an appeal.  The win means that potentially millions of people could see their premiums rise as insurers lose subsidies intended to help them pay down healthcare costs.  It also gives Republicans a victory over what they deem "executive overreach" by President Obama.

Obamacare Spending Ruled Unconstitutional.  Yesterday [5/12/2016], U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer dealt the Obama administration an important defeat that will affect its ability to keep Obamacare afloat.  The case, House of Representatives v.  Burwell, involves reimbursements the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has been paying to insurers to keep out-of-pocket costs artificially low for patients with incomes up to 250 percent of the federal poverty line.  Congress refused to appropriate the funds for this scheme, but HHS reimbursed the insurers anyway, whereupon the House sued the Obama administration.  Judge Collyer ruled that the payment of such reimbursements without congressional authorization "violates the Constitution."

Judge rules for House Republicans in ObamaCare lawsuit.  A federal judge ruled Thursday [5/12/2016] for House Republicans in a challenge brought against the Obama administration over the legality of payments to insurers under ObamaCare.  U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer ruled the spending unconstitutional — while putting the decision on hold pending appeal.  The ruling Thursday [5/12/2016] marks a win for House Republicans who brought the politically charged legal challenge, and a legal setback for the administration.

Supreme Court temporarily allows religious groups not to cover birth control.  The Obama administration faced a fresh challenge to its health-care law just as many of its key provisions took effect Wednesday, after an eleventh-hour Supreme Court ruling temporarily allowed some Catholic groups not to cover birth control in their employee health plans.  The requirement that employers cover contraception and related medications and procedures has been one of the most controversial parts of the Affordable Care Act, leading to dozens of lawsuits from groups that say it violates their religious freedom.  The Supreme Court will hear arguments on the issue this year.

Ruling by Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor sets off another battle over Obamacare.  Advocates for a Denver-based congregation of Catholic nuns on Wednesday applauded an eleventh-hour order by Supreme CourtJustice Sonia Sotomayor to temporarily block a requirement under the Affordable Care Act to insure birth control procedures, but attorneys and analysts agreed the fight is far from over.  The complicated politics of Obamacare were on full display on the first day of the year as a key component of President Obama's health care law was put on indefinite hold at the last moment by a Catholic court justice whom Mr. Obama himself named to the high court.

Priests for Life on Staten Island gains temporary reprieve from Obamacare mandate.  An emergency injunction granted on New Year's Eve in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Washington, D.C., circuit means that Priests for Life in New Dorp need not obey the Obamacare contraception mandate during the appeals process.  Priests for Life will not have to cancel health insurance for its employees, as the Rev. Frank Pavone, national director of Priests for Life, had threatened.  Father Pavone expressed gratitude that his organization does not face steep fines for the mandate which went into effect on Wednesday as part of the Affordable Care Act.

Justice delays health law's birth control mandate.  Only hours before the law was to take effect, a Supreme Court justice on Tuesday blocked implementation of part of President Barack Obama's health care law that would have forced some religion-affiliated organizations to provide health insurance for employees that includes birth control.

More On That Injunction In Favor of Religious Liberty.  Congratulations and thanks to my friends Rob Muise and Dave Yerushalmi at the American Freedom Law Center.  They worked tirelessly and down to the 2013 wire to persuade the DC Circuit to issue the injunction Kathryn posted about last night.  That ruling prevented the Obamacare mandate from going into effect — i.e., from coercing religious believers, against the tenets of their faiths, to provide coverage for abortifacients and contraceptives.

Four injunctions against the Obamacare contraceptive mandate yesterday.  Is this some kind of record?  On the last day of 2013 four different federal appeals courts issued temporary injunctions against enforcement of the Obamacare contraceptive mandate.

Texas Judge Strikes Down Obamacare Abortion Mandate.  A federal judge in Huston ruled today [12/27/2013] that two Texas Baptist institutions, East Texas Baptist University and Houston Baptist University, are not required to provide abortion-causing drugs to their employees under Obamacare, 1200 WOAI news reports.  The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which represented the institutions, says it has now won 9 out of 12 cases which have come before the federal courts challenging the so called 'Obamacare mandate,' that employer-provided health care provide access to abortion drugs and contraceptives.

Texas Baptist universities win lawsuit against controversal HHS mandate.  On Friday (Dec. 27) a Houston federal court delivered a major blow to the controversial HHS mandate ruling in favor of East Texas Baptist University and Houston Baptist University.  In a 46-page opinion, the court ruled that the federal mandate requiring employers to provide employees with abortion-causing drugs and devices violates federal civil rights laws, and issued an injunction against the mandate.  Religious plaintiffs have now won injunctions in 9 out of 12 such cases involving non-profit entities challenging the mandate.

FW SB Catholic Diocese gets relief from contraception mandate.  A federal judge in South Bend has provided some last minute relief to a host of Catholic entities across northern Indiana.  A preliminary injunction blocks enforcement of the so-called "contraceptive mandate" in the federal government's Affordable Care Act.  As a result, the University of St. Francis in Fort Wayne now has what the University of Notre Dame was denied:  Court ordered protection for employees from the contraception mandate due to take effect January 1st.

Obamacare smackdown.  Yet another federal jurist has determined the White House unlawfully infringed on religious freedom with its blinkered insistence that Obamacare health insurance policies must be identical, no matter what.  Brooklyn Federal Judge Brian Cogan rebuked the administration for ordering two New York Catholic high schools — Cardinal Spellman in the Bronx and Monsignor Farrell on Staten Island — to provide contraception and sterilization coverage to employees.  Standing for American tradition, Cogan also neatly exposed as a sham the Obama administration's scheme to pretend the government was not compelling faith-based organizations, such as the high schools, to violate their core beliefs.

Bible publisher wins third injunction against HHS contraception mandate.  Opponents of the HHS contraception mandate got good news late on Friday — another plaintiff won a preliminary injunction against its enforcement on Friday [11/16/2012] in federal court.

Bible Publisher Beats Obama Abortion-HHS Mandate in Court.  A federal court today stopped enforcement of the Obama administration's abortion pill mandate against a Bible publisher which filed a lawsuit against it.  The mandate has generated massive opposition from pro-life groups because it forces employers, regardless of their religious or moral convictions, to provide insurance coverage for abortion-inducing drugs, sterilization, and contraception under threat of heavy penalties.

Supreme Court: Another Chance to Kill Obamacare.  Not surprisingly, the mainstream media paid it little attention, but back in November the U.S. Supreme Court shocked many in the legal community by granting Liberty Counsel's motion for a rehearing on its multi-pronged challenge to Obamacare.  The high court ordered the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to rehear arguments.  This is extremely rare and means, almost certainly, that Chief Justice Roberts will get another bite at the rotten apple — this time, with a whole new quiver of legal arrows.

Missouri law for employers to exempt birth control coverage struck down.  A federal judge has struck down a Missouri law exempting moral objectors from mandatory birth control coverage because it conflicts with an insurance requirement under President Barack Obama's healthcare law.

St. Joseph company receives injunction from provisions in Care Act.  Greg Hall is safe from government fines — for now.  The Catholic deacon who owns American Manufacturing Company in St. Joseph has received a preliminary injunction protecting him from provisions in the Affordable Care Act.  The injunction was issued Tuesday in the 8th Circuit of the federal district courts by U.S. District Court Judge John R. Tunheim.  In short, he won't have to start providing insurance that covers contraception, sterilization or abortifacient drugs to his employees.

Court strikes down mandate for birth control in ObamaCare.  The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals — the second most influential bench in the land behind the Supreme Court — ruled 2-1 in favor of business owners who are fighting the requirement that they provide their employees with health insurance that covers birth control.  Requiring companies to cover their employees' contraception, the court ruled [11/1/2013], is unduly burdensome for business owners who oppose birth control on religious grounds, even if they are not purchasing the contraception directly.

An Anti-Birth Control Employer Just Beat Obamacare in Federal Court.  The D.C. Circuit Court has upheld a legal challenge to the provision of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) that mandates employer coverage of birth control, arguing that it "trammels" the expression of religious freedom.  While the legal process over the issue isn't final, the decision hands a huge political victory to conservative activists that have long made this argument.  The case stems from a lawsuit filed by Freshway Foods and Freshway Logistics, an Ohio-based firm that does food service work.

"It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood."

— James Madison