Readers React: Immigration spat won’t decide Obamacare’s fate

To the editor: The great leap to conclusion engendered by your article and the headline is a disservice to the rule of law, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and the American people. It reduces the judicial process and its ability to make relevant distinctions based on law and fact to a political stew. (“With executive action, Obama risks losing Chief Justice John Roberts,” Dec. 1)

Your contention that President Obama’s immigration action might influence the justices, particularly Roberts, on an upcoming healthcare case is invalid.

I am not naive. As a lawyer for more than 40 years, mostly representing governmental entities, I have seen a lot, but not enough to reduce the chief justice to a reactionary politician. Roberts knows and respects the law, and your readers have been mislead by a simplistic political characterization in lieu of the contextual and legal issues that distinguish presidential action on immigration from legislation on healthcare.

Both sides in the healthcare case will fully brief the justices; their arguments will impact the judges, not some concocted political conflict.

Michael H. Miller, Los Angeles

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To the editor: I got a little excited at the article’s headline until I read the subheadline: “The president’s executive action on immigration could turn John Roberts against healthcare law.”

I am so naive. I didn’t realize working with the Supreme Court was a negotiation, a tit for tat.

Laurie Kilpatrick, Los Angeles

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To the editor: It’s difficult to see how the case over insurance subsidies could be decided by an irrelevant outside issue like immigration.

At its heart, this is really nothing more that a case of statutory interpretation. Will the highest court in the nation use a highly stinted interpretation of the statute to significantly weaken the healthcare law because of a fit of pique over immigration?

Kevin Powell, Long Beach

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To the editor: So Obama may well lose the one conservative he really needs to keep the Affordable Care Act intact. The GOP is very willing to eliminate government insurance subsidies to low- and middle-income enrollees in two-thirds of the nation to get even with the president for going it alone on immigration.

Children, children: Please grow up and act responsible.

Allen F. Dziuk, Carlsbad

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