On my twitter feed they said the vote was 6-3

Here's why it is confusing: 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.

6-3 might be another vote on a different question (there were four).

subtleties and nuance will not penetrate my brain today

Kagan, Sotomayor, Ginsberg & Breyer voted would have upheld it under the commerce clause and/or as a tax, Roberts only agreed in so far as it is a tax - so he really did save this thing by a hair.

Again quoting: In opening his statement in dissent, Kennedy says: "In our view, the entire Act before us is invalid in its entirety."

OMG Sparky.

I actively dislike chat. It's just not my favorite medium of communication. I'll use it with my brother sometimes, but just...no. Not my thing.

>"These cats aren't going to stack themselves."

I say that too!

Quoting: 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.