Antonin Scalia, being on the Supreme Court, can’t use the word “bullshit” to describe his opponents’ legal opinions.  So the famously scathing justice has coined a number of synonyms over the years, his favorite of which seems to be “argle bargle.”

His latest scornful neologism, debuted in his dissent in the King v. Burwell case, is “jiggery-pokery.”  He uses it to describe one of the Court’s arguments over tax credits, but it seems to sum up his view of the entire pro-Obamacare decision.

King v. Burwell is about whether the Department of Health and Human Services can distribute subsidies through federally established Obamacare exchanges given that Section 36B of the law limits those giveaways to exchanges “established by the State.”  Roberts concedes that the language is poorly constructed, but goes on to extract all kinds of context from elsewhere in the law to claim that its drafters intended to allow subsidies in the federal exchanges too.

Scalia is known for his acerbic prose, but his dissent in King v. Burwell makes many of his previous opinions look like women’s magazine puff pieces.  He begins: “The Court holds that when the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act says ‘Exchange established by the State’ it means ‘Exchange established by the State or the Federal Government.’  That is of course quite absurd, and the Court’s 21 pages of explanation make it no less so.”

So thoroughly do those two sentences destroy Roberts’ case as to make anything else seem superfluous.  But Scalia continues with dripping pen. Noting that Section 36B requires anyone receiving subsidies to enroll in an “Exchange established by the State,” he drily notes that the “Secretary of Health and Human Services is not a State” and therefore federal exchanges don’t qualify for subsidies. “Words no longer have meaning if an Exchange that is not established by a State is ‘established by the State,'” he writes.

Roberts tries to claim there’s a contextual muddle in the law with regard to what’s a state exchange and what’s a federal exchange.  Scalia points to the numerous provisions that draw sharp distinctions between the two.  He also lists six other clauses that refer to “an Exchange established by the State” and whose meanings would be altered if federal exchanges were looped in there too.

Elsewhere he observes: “One begins to get the sense that the Court’s insistence on reading things in context applies to ‘established by the State,’ but to nothing else.”

Roberts’ argument hinges on his stipulation that the language in Section 36B is “ambiguous” and therefore up for interpretation by the Court.  Scalia rejoins that the language isn’t ambiguous—its meaning is quite clear—but rather anomalous, in that it seems to contradict the policy aims of the law. He cites Michigan v. Bay Mills Indian Community, which says the Court “does not revise legislation…just because the text as written creates an apparent anomaly.”

That brings us to Scalia’s final argument about how the Court has twisted itself into a pretzel by redefining Section 36B:

Could anyone maintain with a straight face that §36B is unclear?  To mention just the highlights, the Court’s interpretation clashes with a statutory definition, renders words inoperative in at least seven separate provisions of the Act, overlooks the contrast between provisions that say “Exchange” and those that say “Exchange established by the State,” gives the same phrase one meaning for purposes of tax credits but an entirely different meaning for other purposes, and (let us not forget) contradicts the ordinary meaning of the words Congress used.  On the other side of the ledger, the Court has come up with nothing more than a general provision that turns out to be controlled by a specific one, a handful of clauses that are consistent with either understanding of establishment by the State, and a resemblance between the tax-credit provision and the rest of the tax code.  If that is all it takes to make something ambiguous, everything is ambiguous.

It’s a magnificent indictment of just how unbalanced and selective the Court’s opinion is.  If you’re drawing question marks on some of that, do yourself a favor and read his opinion in full.  I can’t hope to do it justice even in a blog post as windy as this one.

Perhaps the most jarring language from Scalia comes early in his dissent.  “Under all the usual rules of interpretation, in short, the Government should lose this case,” he writes.  “But normal rules of interpretation seem always to yield to the overriding principle of the present Court: The Affordable Care Act must be saved.”  That’s a blistering statement even for Scalia, and effectively accuses the Roberts court of being in the tank for Obamacare.  One wonders if this is just Scalia being Scalia, or if there’s genuine acrimony behind the scenes over the Court’s decisions on health care.

I’ve long been skeptical of King v. Burwell and wondered whether its anti-Obamacare litigators were trying to create gold out of copper.  After reading Scalia’s powerful dissent, I’ve changed my mind.  The Court should have struck down Obamacare in its entirety.  That it didn’t is nothing short of jiggery-pokery.