20121776 Club
Roberts sides with liberals; the ACA's individual mandate stands, recast as a tax
The same 5-4 ruling hands opponents a partial win: states may refuse the Medicaid expansion without forfeiting their existing federal funding.
Two years after President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law, its survival came down to a single unexpected vote. On June 28, 2012, Chief Justice John Roberts joined the Court's four liberal justices in a 5-4 ruling that upheld the ACA's individual mandate — not under the Commerce Clause, as Congress had argued, but as a constitutional exercise of the taxing power. The same decision handed opponents a partial victory: the Court ruled the law's Medicaid expansion unconstitutionally coercive, allowing states to refuse it without losing existing Medicaid funding…
