text: Photograph by Ken Heinen/Getty Images. 
   
   Read the rest of Slate’s coverage on the Supreme Court upholding the Affordable Care Act. 
   
   There were two battles being fought in the Supreme Court over the Affordable Care Act. Chief Justice John Roberts—and Justice Anthony Kennedy—delivered victory to the right in the one that mattered. 
   
   Yes, Roberts voted to uphold the individual mandate, joining the court's liberal wing to give President Obama a 5-4 victory on his signature piece of legislation. Right-wing partisans are crying treason; left-wing partisans saw their predictions of a bitter, party-line defeat undone. 
   
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   But the health care law was, ultimately, a pretext. This was a test case for the long-standing—but previously fringe—campaign to rewrite Congress' regulatory powers under the Commerce Clause. 
   
   This is why the challenge to the ACA, and its progress through the courts, came as a surprise to Democrats and to mainstream constitutional scholars: Three years ago, there was no serious doubt that Congress had the power to impose the individual mandate. 
   
   A Bloomberg story last week nicely captured the stakes: "Obama Health Law Seen Valid, Scholars Expect Rejection": 
   
   The U.S. Supreme Court should uphold a law requiring most Americans to have health insurance if the justices follow legal precedent, according to 19 of 21 constitutional law professors who ventured an opinion on the most-anticipated ruling in years. 
   
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   Only eight of them predicted the court would do so. 
   
   The scholars expected to see the court gut existing Commerce Clause precedent and overturn the individual mandate in a partisan decision: Five Republican-appointed justices voting to rewrite doctrine and reject Obamacare; four Democratic-appointed justices dissenting. 
   
   Roberts was smarter than that. By ruling that the individual mandate was permissible as a tax, he joined the Democratic appointees to uphold the law—while joining the Republican wing to gut the Commerce Clause (and push back against the necessary-and-proper clause as well). Here's the Chief Justice's opinion (italics in original): 
   
   Construing the Commerce Clause to permit Congress to regulate individuals precisely because they are doing nothing would open a new and potentially vast domain to congressional authority. Congress already possesses expansive power to regulate what people do. Upholding the Affordable Care Act under the Commerce Clause would give Congress the same license to regulate what people do not do. The Framers knew the difference between doing something and doing nothing. They gave Congress the power to regulate commerce, not to compel it. Ignoring that distinction would undermine the principle that the Federal Government is a government of limited and enumerated powers. The individual mandate thus cannot be sustained under Congress’s power to “regulate Commerce.” 
   
   The business about "new and potentially vast" authority is a fig leaf. This is a substantial rollback of Congress' regulatory powers, and the chief justice knows it. It is what Roberts has been pursuing ever since he signed up with the Federalist Society. In 2005, Sen. Barack Obama spoke in opposition to Roberts' nomination, saying he did not trust his political philosophy on tough questions such as "whether the Commerce Clause empowers Congress to speak on those issues of broad national concern that may be only tangentially related to what is easily defined as interstate commerce." Today, Roberts did what Obama predicted he would do. ||||| John Roberts, former character actor as "the dad who wears khaki shorts and stands with his hands on his hips a lot," joined the liberal wing of the Supreme Court in upholding the Affordable Care Act, or "Obamacare." In doing so, he gave a lot of people who don't pay attention reason to celebrate him on Twitter. They're idiots. 
   
   It's easy to like Roberts. Unlike other members of the conservative wing of the court, he doesn't look like his ideology is consuming his flesh from the inside out. The rest of the court ghouls embody the old Orwell quote that by age 50 every man has the face he deserves. Thomas—sullen, glowering, damned—digs his chin further into his neck with every session, his jowls subsiding like a California landslide in agonizing slow motion. Alito sits like a rubberized effacement of humanity, with his doll's-eyed cipher expression taking turns with a simpering smile only a cruel person would teach somebody. Then there's Scalia, America's prick uncle who farts at Easter dinner and doesn't even need to overhear all of your conversation before interrupting you to tell you you're wrong. 
   
   Compared to them, John Roberts and family are a Carnival Cruise ad. Ahahaha, dad just dougie'd. Mom did a cannonball into the pool. TENNIS?—ON A BOAT??? Everyone's tanning! 
   
   
   
   It's tempting to conflate appearance and character, to paint onto a welcome canvas things with which you agree and omit those things that seem ugly. So Roberts, who played the humble, inoffensive judicial nominee role to the hilt during his confirmation, has always offered a welcoming ambiguity to the uninitiated. Jeffrey Toobin might have been ready to consider him archly conservative in the New Yorker, but most of the rest of us were just guessing. 
   
   With today's ruling, you can already see lay-readers reevaluating Roberts as a decent-if-misguided guy who was willing to see reason. He upheld Obamacare! (Ignore the ruling on Montana's campaign finance laws earlier this week.) The consensus just two years ago, however, was that Obamacare was perfectly constitutional under the commerce clause. That there was even a debate was fundamentally absurd. 
   
   Instead, today Roberts upheld the law as a tax, claiming that, "The individual mandate... cannot be sustained under Congress's power to 'regulate Commerce.'" His opinion preserves the illusion of a court that impartially rules on the law and is not—in four cases at least—intensely motivated by partisan political considerations. At the same time, it represents the first major step in rolling back an interpretation of the commerce clause that has been considered fundamental for roughly 80 years, one whose elimination has been a Federalist Society wet dream for 30. 
   
   Lastly, in upholding the ACA as a tax, Roberts has also neatly handed the Republican Party a talking point to carry through to November. It took less than two hours for Marco Rubio to start babbling the same hoary litany, "This is the largest tax on the middle class in American history," and, "Every member of the middle class now has an IRS problem." 
   
   Democracts might want to rein in the celebration, and the right can put the fire ax back up next to the box marked BREAK GLASS IN CASE OF COMMUNISM. Roberts upheld one law today. He also opened the back door to gutting or eliminating countless other ones. But this is just calling balls and strikes. Humble stuff. If this were judicial activism, then it might actually be a big deal. 
   
   [Image via AP]
target: – John Roberts upheld the Affordable Care Act today, and "in doing so, he gave a lot of people who don't pay attention a reason to celebrate him on Twitter," writes Mobutu Sese Seko of Gawker. "They're idiots." Seko and some other observers believe Roberts had a secret plan. Yes, his ruling hands Obama a superficial victory, but that "was, ultimately, a pretext," writes Tom Scocca of Slate. His real goal: to gut the commerce clause, and fundamentally cripple Congress' ability to regulate. Roberts ruled that the victory was a result of Congress' power to tax, not the commerce clause. In so doing he's rolling back long-held precedent, and severely curtailing Congress' power. "It is what Roberts has been pursuing ever since he signed up with the Federalist Society," Scocca writes. "Roberts' genius was in pushing this through without attaching it to the coattails of an ugly, narrow partisan victory." Seko also notes that by using the tax power, he's "handed the Republican Party a talking point." The ACA is now, officially, a tax.