Brett Kavanaugh’s Obamacare decision is a reason for concern, not panic

Published July 10, 2018 4:38pm ET



Though President Trump’s pick of Brett Kavanaugh for the Supreme Court has been broadly praised among the conservative legal establishment, it has produced its share of grumbles among other conservatives. Part of the division is based more on intangible cultural factors. Though nobody would question his credentials, there’s fear among a subset of conservatives that as a Washington insider and former Bush administration lawyer, Kavanaugh could turn out to be overly cautious and fearful about upsetting elites, thus upholding unconstitutional laws and sustaining bad precedents.

Though Kavanaugh’s hundreds of decisions in a dozen years as an appellate judge have been broadly conservative (particularly when it comes to reining in the regulatory state), there is one decision in particular that has divided conservatives — his dissenting opinion in an Obamacare case brought to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2011. This has triggered a debate over whether Kavanaugh could be another Chief Justice John Roberts, who the Right still does not forgive for upholding Obamacare.

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