The Texans Challenging Obamacare Have No Standing
If there’s no penalty for going without insurance, there’s no injury. That should be obvious.
Are you ever tempted to believe that right-wing judges are just passive umpires who call balls and strikes? That they only “enforce the Constitution” or “read the statute”? Judge Reed O’Connor of Texas should cure you of that misimpression. On Friday, when he declared the entire Affordable Care Act invalid, he said he was only doing what the Constitution requires. But in deciding the case, he violated the very document he claimed to be applying. And he did it without any plausible justification at all, in defiance of basic legal principles.
Article III of the United States Constitution says that the federal courts can hear only “Cases and Controversies.” The Supreme Court has read that
