"Congress Does Not Hide Elephants In Mouseholes" Edition: Texas Slapped Down, 7-2, By Supremes... ACA Of 2010 Continues To Be Lawful.

We said so in November 2020, and December of that year, as the Supremes offered very skeptical questions -- on Texas's preposterous claim that six words in a 2,400 page statute on taxation (relating to when the government need NOT collect a tax). . . invalidated the whole of Obamacare.

Silly. But we are done with the insolent moron AG Paxson, down there, and the bumbling Governor Abbott, once more. And the Supremes did so by simply saying they lack. . . standing. [Just as Texas. . . lacked standing a month ago, in the case now dead, before young USDC Judge Tipton -- on the "dead hand" Texas immigration efforts. It just never made it out of that judge's low courtroom before dying.] Here's the morning's most majestic opinion, and a bit:

. . .We proceed no further than standing. The Constitution gives federal courts the power to adjudicate only genuine “Cases” and “Controversies.” Art. III, §2. That power includes the requirement that litigants have standing. A plaintiff has standing only if he can “allege personal injury fairly traceable to the defendant’s allegedly unlawful conduct and likely to be redressed by the requested relief.” DaimlerChrysler Corp. v. Cuno, 547 U. S. 332, 342 (2006). . . . Neither the individual nor the state plaintiffs have shown that the injury they will suffer or have suffered is “fairly traceable” to the “allegedly unlawful conduct” of which they complain. . . .

The Declaratory Judgment Act, 28 U. S. C. §2201, alone does not provide a court with jurisdiction. See Skelly Oil Co. v. Phillips Petroleum Co., 339 U. S. 667, 671–672 (1950); R. Fallon, J. Manning, D. Meltzer, & D. Shapiro, Hart and Wechsler’s The Federal Courts and the Federal System 841 (7th ed. 2015) (that Act does “not confe[r] jurisdiction over declaratory actions when the underlying dispute could not otherwise be heard in federal court”); see also Poe v. Ullman, 367 U. S. 497, 506 (1961) (“[T]he declaratory judgment device does not . . . permit litigants to invoke the power of this Court to obtain constitutional rulings in advance of necessity”). . . .

Instead, just like suits for every other type of remedy, declaratory judgment actions must satisfy Article III’s case-or-controversy requirement. See MedImmune, Inc. v. Genentech, Inc., 549 U. S. 118, 126–127 (2007). At a minimum, this means that the dispute must “be ‘real and substantial’ and ‘admit of specific relief through a decree of a conclusive character, as distinguished from an opinion advising what the law would be upon a hypothetical state of facts.’ ” Id., at 127 (alteration omitted). Thus, to satisfy Article III standing, we must look elsewhere to find a remedy that will redress the individual plaintiffs’ injuries. . . .

Onward, grinning -- no elephants to be found in these mouseholes.

नमस्ते