SCOTUS upholds Obamacare mandate for high-risk sex drugs, in boon for unelected bureaucrats

In a major boon for unelected bureaucrats across the federal government, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force's former method of appointing its members, even though they weren't appointed by or answerable to the president, and hence the enforceability of their HIV drug insurance mandate.

"The Task Force members are removable at will" by the secretary of health and human services "and their recommendations are reviewable by the Secretary before they take effect," meaning they are "supervised and directed by the Secretary, who in turn answers to the President, preserving the chain of command in Article II," Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote for the majority in the 6-3 opinion, which split the high court's conservatives.

"Therefore, under Article II and this Court’s precedents, the Task Force members are inferior officers" and the secretary's appointment of them "is consistent with the Appointments Clause," he wrote.

Self-insured Christian employer "Braidwood’s interpretation would create a bizarre scheme where Congress was entirely indifferent about who would appoint members making legally binding healthcare recommendations," the opinion said

Supporters of Braidwood, which said the mandate made it "complicit in facilitating homosexual behavior," said upholding the task force structure would further empower unaccountable bureaucrats and weaken Congress.

"At the beginning of this suit, a subordinate official within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) had for years appointed the Task Force’s members," said the dissent by Justice Clarence Thomas, joined by justices Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch.

"Everyone now agrees that this practice was unlawful. Everyone further agrees that no one statute provides for a department head to appoint the Task Force’s members," Thomas wrote. 

"But, rather than accept that the default mode of appointment applies, the Government invented a new theory on appeal, arguing that the combination of two ambiguously worded statutes enacted decades apart establishes that the Secretary of HHS can appoint the Task Force’s members," the dissent says.

While the case should have returned to lower court to evaluate this "new theory," if SCOTUS must decide it, "I do not see how Congress has spoken with the clarity needed to depart from the default rule," which the majority treats "as an inconvenient obstacle to be overcome, not a constitutional principle to be honored," Thomas wrote.