I’m not advocating for or against, just responding to some of the comments in this thread. The states may have ACA regulatory costs, but they are not related to the case before the court. They too needed to show harm resulting from the elimination of the mandate. 7 of the 9 justices agreed on this opinion, which is pretty high and denotes (IMHO) a pretty solid conclusion. I’m not a lawyer, so I’ll step back now.
I do know one lawyer who posts here - and has not shared a view on this decision. The rest of us are ... not lawyers.
Right. I haven't been to law school either. And this is complicated because it's somehow a side suit related to the original action, and it's related to at least two or three other high profile earlier ACA cases.
But there are two points I'd like to address:
First, the plaintiff states' regulatory harms are discussed in the opinion on this case - see the bottom of page 3 where they are discussed in the majority opinion and page 11 where they are detailed in the dissenting opinion. So they certainly seem like part of this lawsuit.
Second, the party needs to show harm from the law, not from the elimination of the mandate. So the law itself is the objection, not the 2017 change to the law. The argument is something like:
A. The 2017 elimination of the penalty is what the states are arguing makes the mandate unconstitutional (In the original NFIB decision, the penalty was what made the mandate Constitutional - see Alito's dissent pp 23-24.)
B. If the mandate is not severable from the rest of the law then the law is unconstitutional. (In NFIB, the federal government argued that the mandate was not severable and Ginsburg agreed and the SC decision there also concluded so - see dissent page 28.)
C. And if that is true, then the states have standing to ask for relief from the burdens of the unconstitutional law. States are not required to comply with unconstitutional laws, which the ACA case about expanded Medicaid is a recent example.
OK, I really don't want to argue this any further. Both of us are amateurs, and I think there are even plenty of professionals who have differing opinions (see the 7-2, I think all 9 of those are professionals
). I'll let you have the last word if you would like.