This week Republican lawyers will be busy arguing
two important cases before the Supreme Court. On Monday, they hope to
strike another blow at our dying democracy. The plan for Wednesday is
to take another whack at killing the ACA, or Obamacare.
As Ruth Bader Ginsburg has said on many occasions,
Citizens United was the worst decision made by the Roberts Court. That
ruling combined with McCutcheon v. the FCC enabled rich individuals to
buy lawmakers at all levels of government. Both rulings introduced
structural changes to change our political system to one in which
government is bought and controlled by a handful of people.
The Supreme Court dealt a second blow to free and
fair elections when it gutted the Voting Rights Act. While efforts to
suppress the vote were evident before that ruling, it became more
blatant and pronounced once the SCOTUS nodded in approval of efforts to
silence identifiable groups of people who are least likely to support
the Republican Party’s far right wing agenda.
Now Republicans are back at the Supreme Court
seeking to secure their “right” to gerrymander. In reality,
gerrymandering serves two objectives. On one hand, it enables
Republicans to secure majorities in legislatures without support from
the majority of voters. On the other, gerrymandering provides a fig
leaf of “legitimacy” to guarantee that result. We still have
“elections” just with enough “safe” Republican seats to guarantee their
perpetual hold on power.
In an effort to counteract the effects of
gerrymandering lawmakers in Arizona, California and several other states
decided to establish independent districting commissions to redraw the
districts.
Previously the court refused to consider lawsuits that challenge excessive partisanship in redistricting or gerrymandering.
The Obama administration said
that independent commissions such as the one in Arizona “may be the
only meaningful check” left to states that care about competitive
elections, reduced political polarization and bringing fresh faces to
the political process.
However, Republicans in Arizona are asking the
Roberts Court to get rid of these commissions. After all, that would
mean Republicans would have to go back to earning votes in what were
once safe districts. It means they “have to” represent the people who
elected them. It means they lose the freedom to openly express contempt
for women, racial minorities, religious minorities, gays, poor people
and anyone else who rejects the Koch agenda.
On Wednesday, Republicans will return to the Supreme
Court – this time to use four words in the ACA to take healthcare away
from millions of Americans. In essence, Republican lawyers are trying
to argue in King v. Burwell that the ACA was designed to penalize states
that don’t create exchanges by denying federal subsidies to residents
of those states. To put it mildly, questions have been raised about the
plaintiffs’ standing in this case. That alone should be a basis to dismiss the case.
If for some reason the Court chooses to ignore the
issue of standing to look at the merits, Republican lawyers would have
to persuade the court to look exclusively at these words four words:
“established by the state.” to the exclusion of everything else in the
law. Republicans want the court to believe those four words mean only
people in states that established their own exchanges are eligible for
federal subsidies. They want the court to ignore other clauses in the
2000 page law that suggest the real intent was to assure subsidies to
people who need them, regardless of where they live. To succeed,
Republican lawyers would also have to convince the Court to ignore the expressed intent of lawmakers.
To grant Republicans a ruling in their favor, sympathetic Justices on the Supreme Court would be in tension with the canons of construction.
Of course, that has little meaning to the conservatives on the Roberts Court who believe in ideology first, constitution second.
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