Supreme Court’s Health Care Ruling Delayed to June 28
If you turned on a TV news show Monday morning, you were probably told to expect a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court on the Obama Administration’s Affordable Care Act any minute. Newsrooms around the country were braced for the most important ruling of the court’s term, on what has become the centerpiece of the President’s domestic policies and a vital pivot point in the coming presidential election. SCOTUSblog, a go-to website that monitors the court’s activities, added staff and bolstered its servers to the tune of some $10,000 a day in order to cover the verdict, expected soon after 10 a.m. E.T. Don’t touch that dial.
And then — nothing. While the court did issue major rulings on Arizona’s controversial immigration law and a Montana law on campaign spending, it quit for the day without addressing health care and is expected to pick up again on Thursday.
Supreme Court Justices first heard oral arguments on health care reform in late March and took a preliminary vote on the health care issue on March 30 — at which point both the majority and the minority began drafting opinions as Justices kept discussing the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act. So nearly three months later, what’s behind the continued delay?