UPDATE: The ACA Oral Arguments in SCOTUS are wrapped.

I will be on TV shortly & throughout the day. But I will drop some notes below shortly.

My summary is that the Trump Administration Justice Department did not make the sale.

I suspect that will be the consensus based on the Justices asked but no guarantees.

So put aside all the human arguments— the stupidity and the cruelty of ending the ACA. In a pandemic. Today is a day for structural legal arguments.

The Trump lawyer has to prove 3 things. All 3 of them.
1- They have standing (ie, how are they harmed by paying $0)
2- The mandate is unconstitutional
3- The mandate is not “severance” from the merits of the law

None of the 3 are easy arguments.

The weakest of the arguments is the third— that even if there is standing & the $0 mandate is unconstitutional— that the ACA should go entirely.

And neither Roberts nor Kavanaugh seemed to by the argument.

If that’s right, the implication is that even if they could prove the first 2 points, you would just surgically remove the mandate of $0. Which is what Congress intended to do and actually did.

But the other arguments— standing?? The Fed Govt constantly argues no one has standing. The twisted reading that suggests these states are injured is laughable. The bulk of the conversation was here.

Bottom line: this isn’t a done deal. There are still risks. Still possible to carve other things in as unconstitutional even if this is the right reading. But the job for the Trump/Texas lawyers just got a lot harder.