In March, Twitchy provided you thorough coverage of the Obamacare oral arguments at the Supreme Court (see here, here, and here).
Health care analysts, court watchdogs, and interested citizens are gearing up for possible release of the Obamacare decision this Monday morning.
This might be the week SCOTUS decides Obamacare. The law clerks could be telling the Justices what they decided right now.
— pourmecoffee (@pourmecoffee) June 18, 2012
Will The Supreme Court Hand Down ObamaCare Ruling Monday? Read @IBDinvestors @DavidHogberg's take. http://t.co/xO6BgEtN #tcot #hcr
— AssocAmerPhys&Surg (@AAPSonline) June 17, 2012
"Supreme Court review of health care under microscope (and stopwatch)": Robert Barnes will have this article Monday… http://t.co/jnri07n7
— Howard Bashman (@howappealing) June 18, 2012
Court could let us know by Monday whether we are a free republic or ruled by dictator http://t.co/LPrYqI8a
— James Tomlinson (@jtomli) June 17, 2012
https://twitter.com/wardamn5567/status/214558883857956865
Do not have a good feeling re SCOTUS Obamacare ruling after watching Plouffe. Of course that presumes he knows & he doesn't. #IThink #p2
— Clio the Leo (@CliotheLeo) June 18, 2012
I'm ready to hear the Supreme Court ruling on #ObamaCare. It is #unconstitutional!
— Colton (@C_Carrington) June 17, 2012
Even if #SCOTUS strikes down both mandates in #ObamaCare, here are the top 10 worst things that will remain. http://t.co/GBZEdbUg
— Grace-Marie Turner (@gracemarietweet) June 17, 2012
Avik Roy’s piece in Forbes offers possible hints on the outcome:
Two of the High Court’s justices, Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, dropped hints this weekend as to what the Court might do…On Friday, Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg spoke at the annual Court review of the American Constitution Society, a group “dedicated to…countering the activist conservative legal movement.”
…In her ACS remarks, Ginsburg suggested that she might be on the dissenting side of the case. “I have spoken on more than one occasion about the utility of dissenting opinions, noting in particular that they can reach audiences outside the court and can propel legislative or executive change,” said Ginsburg, in the context of a 2007 pay discrimination case.
After examining the docket, the ACA Litigation Blog thinks the decision won’t be delivered until next Monday:
The Court will hand down one or more opinions–almost certainly more than one–this coming Monday, June 18. The Court will then announce–probably on Monday, probably before noon–whether it will hand down any more opinions later next week. Of course, it will not announce which opinions, just whether it will hand any more down.
In recent Terms, the Court has handed down opinions on Wednesdays or Thursdays of both of the last two weeks of the Term, in addition to the regularly scheduled Mondays. And the Court has already announced that it will issue one or more opinions next Thursday, June 21.
Even so, given that the Court almost never issues more than four or five opinions on the same day, it seems exceedingly unlikely that the Court will hand down the ACA decisions next week–at least if we assume that they will be issued on the last day of the Term. And this seems a safe assumption given their contentiousness and potential complexity.
So putting these pieces together, the earliest date for the ACA decisions would seem to be Monday, June 25.
Here’s Twitchy’s Top 10 list of health care analysts/think tanks/reporters on Twitter to follow as Judgment Day nears:
David Rivkin – initiated questions about Obamacare constitutionality
Howard Bashman – How Appealing
SCOTUS Blog
Avik S.A. Roy – Forbes
Philip Klein – Examiner
Above the Law
Jess Bravin – WSJ Supreme Court reporter
Grace-Marie Turner – Galen Institute
Tony Mauro, SCOTUS correspondent for National Law Journal
Shannon Bream – Fox News Supreme Court correspondent
Join the conversation as a VIP Member