'I Take It That You Don't Adopt That View': Amy Coney Barrett Presses Attorney In Key Obamacare Case

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Justice Amy Coney Barrett questions attorneys in Kennedy v. Braidwood Management, a case which challenges the preventative care provisions in Obamacare.

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00:00I just want to clarify what you mean by the word independent or how you understand it.

00:05I mean, Mr. Mitchell is reading it in a very maximalist way.

00:09You are taking a middle road.

00:12I wonder, I mean, I was thinking of the law clerk example myself.

00:16Does independent even have to mean independent of the secretary?

00:19Because it seems to me that I could give my law clerk some advanced direction.

00:23I could say, I want you to make an independent judgment,

00:25and I want it to be free of political influence or free of outside influence.

00:28And by that, I would mean outside the court.

00:32I might mean outside of our chambers.

00:33But I might not mean for it to be apart from me, not independent of me.

00:38And I could even do that ex ante.

00:40I could say, give me your best understanding of this statute,

00:44which is your best take on its interpretation,

00:46seen through the lens of, you know, the way I interpret statutes, the way I see law.

00:51So not entirely independent.

00:53If you see statutes, I mean, so, you know, I don't put a huge amount of stock in legislative history.

00:57So if I say, you know, give me your best read on a statute and that's what they bring back,

01:02that's not going to be very useful to me.

01:04So they're not independent of me or my instruction,

01:07even though I could say they were independent in a very real sense of the word.

01:11But I take it that you don't adopt that view.

01:14So, Your Honor, we could have taken an even narrower interpretation of independence along the lines you're suggesting.

01:19We thought the better reading of the statute in light of its context is the one we have articulated,

01:24where there is independence in the recommendation made, even vis-a-vis the secretary.

01:29Even vis-a-vis the secretary.

01:30But it doesn't block the secretary on the back end.

01:32Of course, if you want to interpret the statute even more narrowly than that,

01:35then that just makes it even harder for Mr. Mitchell.

01:38Well, I mean, I think the fact that you could interpret it and I think give content to the word independence

01:42in an even narrower sense.

01:44I mean, you have a more middle-of-the-road and then, as I said, I think Mr. Mitchell has a really maximalist view.

01:48I mean, at a minimum, I think it shows that the maximalist view isn't necessary.

01:52I think that's right, Your Honor.

01:53And again, ultimately, I think one way of thinking about this is this is an appointments clause challenge.

01:57So the question is whether there's adequate supervision.

01:59The court doesn't necessarily need to get into the exact level of what independent means

02:04and does it mean what you said or what I said.

02:07All the court really needs to say is there's enough supervision

02:10that these are properly understood as inferior officers.

02:13That's all you need to do to reject the claim here and reverse the decision below.

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