Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/20pdf/19-840_6jfm.pdf
Page Number: 51.0

26 

CALIFORNIA v. TEXAS 

ALITO, J., dissenting 

delay or suspend the collection of revenue.  Unless Congress 
amends that provision and provides for it to begin raising 
revenue at some future date, the “tax” is permanently set 
at zero. 

The state intervenors offer one final defense of the indi-
vidual mandate: Even if it cannot be sustained under the 
Commerce Clause, Taxing Clause, or Necessary and Proper
Clause, they argue that we should interpret the mandate as 
a mere precatory statement.  In their view, Congress is free
to urge Americans to take actions that it could not constitu-
tionally require, and that is all it has done here. 

This  argument  fails  because  the  individual  mandate  is 
not a precatory statement.  The text of the provision is clear.
It  states  that  every  covered  individual  “shall  . . .  ensure 
that  the  individual,  and  any  dependent  of  the  individual 
. . . , is covered under minimum essential coverage . . . .”  26 
U. S. C.  §5000A(a).    “Shall”  typically  means  must,  not 
should.  See  Kingdomware  Technologies,  Inc.  v.  United 
States,  579  U. S.  162,  171–172  (2016).    And  the  text  con-
firms that “shall” means “must” by terming the individual 
mandate a “[r]equirement to maintain minimum essential 
coverage.”  §5000A(a); see also NFIB, 567 U. S., at 663 (joint 
dissent)  (providing  other  statutory  references  to  the  indi-
vidual mandate as a requirement).

Mere precatory provisions, by contrast, typically use the
word “should” to signify that they are not mandatory, e.g., 
4  U. S. C.  §8(c)  (“The  flag  should  never  be  carried  flat  or 
horizontally, but always aloft and free”), or make clear that 
they  convey  only  the  “sense  of  Congress,”  e.g.,  15  U. S. C. 
§7807 (“It is the sense of Congress that States should enact 
the  Uniform  Athlete  Agents  Act  of  2000”).  Congress
adopted those very formulations elsewhere in the ACA, see, 
e.g., 42 U. S. C. §292s(d) (“It is the sense of Congress that 
funds  repaid  under  the  loan  program  . . .  should  not  be 
transferred to the Treasury”), but chose markedly different
language when crafting the individual mandate.  Because