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“Words no longer have meaning if an exchange that is not established by a state is ‘established by the state,’ ” Justice Scalia wrote in his dissent. “It is hard to come up with a clearer way to limit tax credits to state exchanges than to use the words ‘established by the state. And it is hard to come up with a reason to include the words ‘by the state’ other than the purpose of limiting credits to state exchanges.”
Justice Scalia and his fellow dissenters added that normal rules of interpretation don’t appear to apply to a Court that yields always to the overriding principle of saving the ACA.
“Having transformed two major parts of the law, the Court today has turned its attention to a third,” Justice Scalia wrote. “The Act that Congress passed makes tax credits available only on an ‘exchange established by the state.’ This Court, however, concludes that this limitation would prevent the rest of the Act from working as well as hoped. So it rewrites the law to make tax credits available everywhere. We should start calling this law SCOTUScare.”
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This story was updated 6/25/2015.
