Apologies to John Roberts

I jumped the gun and passed judgment on no facts surrounding the actual SCOTUS position authored by John Roberts. It turns out that the decision strongly defends the concept of limited powers under the Commerce Clause, and turns ObamaCare into a tax, which a president can decline to collect (or so it is said).

The key statement in the decision is this:

"Construing the Commerce Clause to permit Congress to regulate individuals precisely because they are doing nothing would open a new and potentially vast domain to congressional authority. Congress already possesses expansive power to regulate what people do. Upholding the Affordable Care Act under the Commerce Clause would give Congress the same license to regulate what people do not do. The Framers knew the difference between doing something and doing nothing. They gave Congress the power to regulate commerce, not to compel it. Ignoring that distinction would undermine the principle that the Federal Government is a government of limited and enumerated powers. The individual mandate thus cannot be sustained under Congress’s power to 'regulate Commerce.'"

[italics in the original].

Roberts defended the Tenth Amendment setting the field for future SCOTUS battles against gvernment overreach, and placed the fate of ObamaCare back into the political arena, where it possibly can be neutralized.

Taxing what "people do not do" is as absurd and dangerous as regulating what they do not do under the Commerce Clause, but it illuminates the issue of using taxation as social engineering, possibly another subject for SCOTUS at some point.