Supreme Court Upholds Key Provisions of PPACA

Joining Roberts in the majority were Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Stephen Breyer, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Anthony Kennedy, and Samuel Alito dissented, and said in a joint statement that PPACA "exceeds federal power both in mandating the purchase of health insurance and in denying non-consenting states all Medicaid funding."

In his dissent Scalia wrote that the Obama Administration was engaging in sophistry on the issue of whether or not the individual mandate constitutes a tax or a penalty. In March the Administration had argued before the high court that the suit was not valid because the Anti-Injunction Act stipulates that a tax cannot be challenged until it has been collected.  

"What the Government would have us believe in these cases is that the very same textual indications that show this is not a tax under the Anti-Injunction Act show that it is a tax under the Constitution. That carries ver­bal wizardry too far, deep into the forbidden land of the sophists," Scalia wrote in dissent.