Nighttime Must-Read: Neil Siegel: Halbig, King, and the Limits of Reasonable Legal Disagreement

…I did not dismiss the arguments of those who disagreed with me. There often has been reasonable, irreconcilable disagreement over the meaning of the Constitution…. Halbig and King… are different. I can accept… that the relevant provisions of the ACA are ambiguous. What I cannot accept as reasonable or responsible… is the argument… that the ACA Congress clearly and unambiguously accomplished what no Member of Congress, no one in the Congressional Budget Office, none of the four dissenting Justices in NFIB v. Sebelius, and no state official realized that Congress had accomplished when it passed the ACA: self-destructively limit the tax subsidies that make health insurance affordable for millions of Americans to those who have the good fortune of happening to reside in states that set up their own health insurance exchanges….

Some may conclude that I am not as tolerant of reasonable legal disagreement as I think I am or used to be. Others may conclude that I care too much about the draconian financial consequences for millions of Americans and insurance companies if this litigation succeeds. I have considered these possibilities, and I have rejected them. The plaintiffs’ case is so weak and transparently political that it is dismaying to see it be taken seriously.