Supreme Court to hear a subtle but terrifying threat to Obamacare
Life is scary when you can't trust judges to act within the law.
IAN MILLHISER
NOV 13, 2018, 1:04 PM
In a sensible world, Virginia House of Delegates v. Bethune-Hill would have nothing whatsoever to do with the Affordable Care Act. On its surface, Bethune-Hill is a racial gerrymandering case which, the Supreme Court announced on Tuesday, will be heard by the Court for the second time.
Yet Bethune-Hill also presents a difficult issue regarding when non-parties to a federal lawsuit may appeal lower court decisions to a higher authority. And this technical question could have tremendous implications for Obamacare. Depending on how the Supreme Court rules in Bethune-Hill, this seemingly irrelevant gerrymandering dispute could enable the Trump administration to collude with a highly partisan judge to shut down the Affordable Care Act in a bevy of red states.
Who can file an appeal?
Bethune-Hill challenges 12 of Virginia’s state legislative districts, alleging they are unlawful racial gerrymanders. This case was originally filed in 2014, and it’s been through several twists and turns since then. Before Tuesday, the most significant recent development was a lower court decision holding that 11 of these 12 districts are, indeed, unlawful. The lower court ordered Virginia’s legislature to draw new maps by October 30.
Significantly, Virginia’s Democratic Attorney General Mark Herring chose not to appeal that lower court order. Instead, it was the state’s Republican-controlled House of Delegates that sought to overturn the lower court’s decision. The House of Delegates are not a party to this suit, but they were granted “intervenor” status by the lower court — status that allowed them to defend the gerrymandered maps in that court.
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The Joke lawsuit
If hundreds of thousands of lives weren’t at stake in Texas v. United States, this lawsuit attacking Obamacare would be an absurdist joke. In Texas, a bloc of 20 Republican governors and state attorneys general claim that the entire Affordable Care Act must be struck down because Congress chose to repeal a single provision of the law.
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DOJ’s Lawlessness
Since the Texas case was filed at the beginning of this year, there have been three developments in this lawsuit worth noting here.
The first is that the Trump administration filed a brief arguing that the Texas plaintiffs should win a partial victory in this suit (that brief reportedly led at least one senior Justice Department attorney to resign in protest). The Trump administration argues that Judge O’Connor should repeal Obamacare’s protections for people with preexisting conditions.
https://thinkprogress.org/scotus-threat-obamacare-ce7e3129ec54/
I firmly believe that all of the judges being rammed through this congress need to be annulled if the traitor is indicted, for laundering money, tax evasion, or colluding with Russia , or whatever transpires, and that Don McGahn, needs to be brought in and questioned in public, about these judges, the Federalist Society and Judicial Watch ...................... a lot of these judges past and present are card signing members of these two organizations...............and that is scary.
And we need to take back the senate
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