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2 

CALIFORNIA v. TEXAS 

ALITO, J., dissenting 

but  the  Court  rejected  that  unprecedented  argument,  see 
567 U. S., at 572 (opinion of the Court); id., at 561 (opinion 
of ROBERTS, C. J.); id., at 648 (joint dissent of Scalia, Ken-
nedy, THOMAS, and ALITO, JJ.).  That might have foretold
doom, but then, in a stunning turn of events, the threat to 
the ACA was defused when the “penalty” for failing to com-
ply with the mandate was found to be a “tax” and thus to be 
justified as an exercise of Congress’s taxing power.  Id., at 
575 (opinion of ROBERTS, C. J.); see also id., at 574 (opinion
of the Court); see U. S. Const., Art. I, §8, cl. 1.  By a vote of 
5 to 4, the individual mandate—and with it the rest of the 
ACA—lived on. 

In  the  next  installment,  King  v.  Burwell,  576  U. S.  473 
(2015), the Court carried out an equally impressive rescue. 
One  of  the Act’s  key  provisions  provided  subsidies  to  per-
sons purchasing insurance through exchanges established 
by  a  “State.”  26  U. S. C.  §§36B(b)–(c)  (2012  ed.).    When 
many States refused to establish such exchanges, the Fed-
eral Government did so instead.  But the critical subsidies 
were seemingly unavailable on those exchanges, which had 
not been established by a “State” in any conventional sense 
of the term.  Once again, some feared that the Act was in
mortal danger, but the Court came to the rescue by finding
that  the  Federal  Government  is  a  “State.”    576  U. S.,  at 
484–498. 

Now, in the trilogy’s third episode, the Court is presented 
with the daunting problem of a “tax” that does not tax.  Can 
the taxing power, which saved the day in the first episode, 
sustain such a curious creature?  In 2017, Congress reduced
the “tax” imposed on Americans who failed to abide by the 
individual mandate to $0.  With that move, the slender reed 
that  supported  the  decision  in  NFIB  was  seemingly  cut 
down, but once again the Court has found a way to protect 
the ACA.  Instead of defending the constitutionality of the 
individual mandate, the Court simply ducks the issue and 
holds  that  none  of  the  Act’s  challengers,  including  the  18