E-LEGAL AND A HEMINGWAY LOOK-A-LIKE-FRACAS

BREAKING: From the Scotus blog- live blogging the health care opinion. Individual mandate survives as a tax! Roberts veers to the left on this one. Almost entire law upheld 5-4. Some individual medicaid provisions limited but not thrown out. 
 Scalia said to have thrown a pizza cutter at Roberts in disgust. More soon. 
Roberts: "We do not consider whether the Act embodies sound policies. That judgment is entrusted to the Nation’s elected leaders. We ask only whether Congress has the power under the Constitution to enact the challenged provisions."

From Scotus live blogging: 
Amy Howe: 
The Court holds that the mandate violates the Commerce Clause, but that doesn't matter b/c there are five votes for the mandate to be constitutional under the taxing power.

Amy Howe: 

In Plain English: The Affordable Care Act, including its individual mandate that virtually all Americans buy health insurance, is constitutional. There were not five votes to uphold it on the ground that Congress could use its power to regulate commerce between the states to require everyone to buy health insurance. However, five Justices agreed that the penalty that someone must pay if he refuses to buy insurance is a kind of tax that Congress can impose using its taxing power. That is all that matters. Because the mandate survives, the Court did not need to decide what other parts of the statute were constitutional, except for a provision that required states to comply with new eligibility requirements for Medicaid or risk losing their funding. On that question, the Court held that the provision is constitutional as long as states would only lose new funds if they didn't comply with the new requirements, rather than all of their funding.

Lyle: 

Essentially, a majority of the Court has accepted the Administration's backup argument that, as Roberts put it, "the mandate can be regarded as establishing a condition -- not owning health insurance -- that triggers a tax -- the required payment to IRS." Actually, this was the Administration's second backup argument: first argument was Commerce Clause, second was Necessary and Proper Clause, and third was as a tax. The third argument won.

UPDATE: The Supreme Court will be issuing the opinion on the health care law Thursday. We're not saying we've seen an advance copy, but we are saying the Roberts authored opinion is a doozy. 
Check back often today and when the opinion is out, we will give you all the info you need to sound intelligent at happy hour tonight. 
Speaking of opinions, coming tomorrow: Leslie and Milt- a love story. 


You must email your pleadings, no, ifs and, or "AOLs" about it. 
Hat Tip to the honorable Judge Juan Ramirez's  (Ret) blog here, which you should check out every few days for appellate law updates (and gentle jibes at Judge Rothenberg). 


In Re: Amendments to the Florida Rules of Judicial Administration, --- So. 3d --- (Fla. June 21, 2012) adopted Florida Rule of Judicial Administration 2.516 (Service of Pleadings and Papers) to provide that all documents required or permitted to be served on another party must be served by e-mail. Under subdivision (b)(1) (Service by Electronic Mail (―e-mail), upon appearing in a proceeding a lawyer must designate a primary e-mail address, and may designate up to two secondary e-mail addresses, for receiving service. Thereafter, service on the lawyer must be made by e-mail. The rule does permit several limited exceptions to this requirement. A lawyer may file a motion to be excused from e-mail service, demonstrating that he or she [is living in the stone age and] has no e-mail account and lacks access to the Internet at the lawyer’s office. Similarly, individuals who are not represented by an attorney may designate an e-mail address for service if they wish; however, pro se litigants are not required to use e-mail service.


The Opinion is here. 
Civil lawyers must email by September 1,  the criminal bar has until October 1 ( a reader says the date is 10/1/2013?? Either way, no time like the present to start the ol' Zeos 286 microprocessor and start sending emails)  to fire up their laptops and PDF files. 


Need an email account for free? Gmail works great. Sign up here. 


FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS


It tolls for those trial lawyers who look like Papa Hemingway:

Order Denying Louderback Time Off