Conservatives have had a series of extreme reactions to the Supreme Court’s Thursday decision to uphold the constitutionality of Obamacare’s individual health care mandate: from charging that Chief Justice John Roberts’s epilepsy medication caused him to support the majority opinion, to calling for an armed rebellion against the Court.

Now, the Merrimack Patch reports that a Tea Party leader in New Hampshire is wishing cancer on the justices:

Former Town Councilor Mike Malzone, the founder of the Merrimack Tea Party, said Thursday in a Facebook post reacting to the Supreme Court ruling on health care, “I hope the (5 supremes) get colon cancer.”

A day after posting the message, Malzone said he stands by what he said. He clarified that he doesn’t want anyone to die, and the cancer reference was more to make a point that he wants them to feel the pain being inflicted on Americans being overburdened by taxes.

“I didn’t wish for anyone to die, but I said I do wish for them to feel our pain,” he said. “No one cares about me, they all make their promises and then go do what they goddamn feel.”

Malzone later apologized for his heated rhetoric, saying in part, “I can’t believe how angry I was. But it is what it is. I apologized to Merrimack Tea followers for my language.”

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who joined the majority opinion, was diagnosed with colon cancer in 1999 and had pancreatic cancer ten years later.

Our guest blogger is Kimberly Ortiz, an organizer for the Retail Wholesale and Department Store Union and a member of the Retail Action Project.

Two years ago, I sat in the ER with my two-year-old Aiden, who had a double ear infection. Though I’d been working as a manager at the Statue of Liberty gift shop for five years, we didn’t have health insurance, I only made $9.25 an hour, and I didn’t get a single paid sick day. Knowing I wasn’t “allowed” to be sick or have a sick child, I called my boss in a panic.

I was told she couldn’t guarantee there would be no repercussions.

Aiden was sick for four days, crying in pain as his fever raged on. Back at work I was written up and “cautioned” even after submitting doctor’s notes. Those four days were all unpaid, so I had to borrow money from friends, family, and neighbors for diapers and food. As long as we have basic necessities, I know how to make do with nothing else.

Balancing childcare, rent, chronic conditions, and my job as a single mother living in the Bronx can be nearly impossible. As Ellen Bravo wrote in response to Anne-Marie Slaughter’s “Why Women Can’t Have it All,” I worried about losing it all, not ‘having it all.’

While I identify with Ms. Slaughter’s insanely busy days, I disagree with her statement that “We may need to put a woman in the White House before we are able to change the conditions of the women working at Walmart.” I’m newer to the world of the politics of work-life balance, but I know that we can’t just rely on our elected officials to change the lives of women like me.

Low-wage women workers need to have a greater voice in the conversation. There are far more women working hourly jobs facing issues of limited advancement than “top women leaders” like Anne Marie Slaughter. And we’re less worried about “having it all” than in achieving a job and schedule that can sustain a family.

By providing sick leave, paid family leave, protections so caregivers have opportunities to advance, and scheduling with enough notice to arrange childcare, and by requiring part-time parity in health insurance benefits, we can prevent working caregivers from feeling like we could lose it all at any time.

This Mother’s day, I found myself speaking on a Senate Congressional panel about my experiences and these solutions, because I’m committed to getting what I deserve for my children and other women like me. And I couldn’t have felt like a better mom.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Rep. Steve King (R-IA) has a message for those Republicans wavering on whether to repeal popular provisions of Obamacare: “it’s all or none.”

ThinkProgress spoke with King, who has been leading the fight against Obamacare since it was signed into law, at the Supreme Court following yesterday’s ruling. In an expectedly dour mood, the Iowa Republican pointed to the November election as their remaining chance to repeal the landmark health care law.

King promised that if Republicans took control, they would undo every part of Obamacare, even popular provisions like protections for people with pre-existing conditions and allowing young adults to stay on their parents’ health care plans. “I don’t want to hear any talk from Republicans about preserving any aspect of it,” King declared. “It’s all or none”:

REPORTER: It seems like as a practical matter, it’d be very tough to get rid of the law if he wins a second term.

KING: I agree. This is it. The battle is enjoined and it’s about Obamacare here to November. And if we seat a majority of the United States Senate of Republicans, hold this majority in the House and elect Mitt Romney, we will undo Obamacare and all of it. I don’t want to hear any talk from Republicans about preserving any aspect of it. It just dilutes the argument. It’s all or none. This is it, we’re all in and I’m ready for that fight.

Watch it:

As polls show an overwhelming majority of Americans support Obamacare’s provisions, many Republicans have begun to show their support for maintaining some of its protections. Even hard-liners like Rep. Allen West (R-FL) and Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO) have pledged to protect certain aspects of Obamacare.

If Republicans prevail in November, there will almost certainly be a showdown between Tea Partiers like King who want to scrap even Obamacare’s popular provisions and more sensible legislators who recognize the importance of maintaining those protections. Unfortunately, given the rightward lurch of Republicans over the past decade, it’s not difficult to guess which side will prevail.

Steven Perlberg contributed to this report.

Republicans are in complete upheaval over Obamacare, fired up by the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold the law yesterday. They have continuously claimed that the government is ramming this legislation down the throats of the American people, and now they are calling it an unwanted financial burden on everyday Americans. In fact, the individual mandate — the portion of the law that Republicans most vociferously oppose — wouldn’t even affect most Americans.

It might be time for Republicans to take a look back at their own record of health care legislation that they did like — and that forced American people, particularly women, into a lot of things:

Forcing women to get transvaginal ultrasounds: Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell wanted to force every woman seeking an abortion to go through the extremely uncomfortable and medically unnecessary procedure of a transvaginal ultrasound — sticking a medical wand far into a woman’s vagina to get a clearer ultrasound image.

Ordering women to cremate and bury their miscarried fetus: A huge abortion omnibus bill in Michigan could force women who miscarry to cremate the miscarried fetuses. This comes at no small expense to the woman: cremation of a fetus costs hundreds of dollars, and interment can be additional thousands. The bill has been passed by the Michigan House, and is awaiting a vote by the Michigan Senate.

Requiring doctors to lie to female patients: In Kansas, Republicans tried to force doctors to tell women that they faced risk of cancer from having an abortion. That is patently untrue, and making doctors say that it was true would be, in effect, requiring them to lie to their patients.

Making a dying woman consult two doctors before she can get a life-saving abortion: The New Hampshire legislature just overrode a veto by the Governor, forcing through a law that bans “partial birth” abortions. The law only reinforces federal law, but has the additional requirement that any woman who is exempt from the abortion ban because her life is at risk must visit not one but two doctors before she can get the procedure to save her life. For many rural women, especially those facing life-threatening conditions, this is near impossible.

Mandating people pay extra to give medical device companies a tax break: Rep. Erik Paulsen (R-MN) worked so hard to protect medical device companies from having to pay, that he has instead passed their costs onto the consumer — regular Americans — by increasing the cost of health coverage.

House Republicans have long promised to “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act, but their actual plan to replace the 2010 health care reform law, which the Supreme Court upheld on Thursday, has been uncertain. Some members want to preserve aspects of the law, while others have urged for a full repeal.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) announced shortly after the court’s ruling that the House will vote to repeal Obamacare on July 11. As far as what replaces it, he told Tom Brokaw on MSNBC’s Morning Joe that the GOP’s 2009 health care plan is their alternative to President Obama’s health law:

CANTOR: Tom, you knew back in 2009 when the Obamacare bill was being considered on the House floor, we put forward our alternative. So to sit here and say we don’t have a replacement is not correct. What we have now, though, is the challenge of repealing this law.

Watch his comments:

Of course, as ThinkProgress reported in 2009, the plan Cantor mentions is the one that would have shifted the costs and risks of insurance onto individuals and divided the market into low-cost plans for the healthy and high-cost insurance for the sick. The 230-page Obamacare alternative would have done very little to expand access to health care or lower costs. When the Congressional Budget Office compared the GOP plan to the Affordable Care Act in 2009, the CBO found that the Republican proposal would leave 52 million people uninsured and add $8 billion to the deficit, even though a spokesperson for then-House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) falsely claimed their alternative “will cover millions more Americans” than the Democrats’ bill.

Compared to the roughly 30 million who will have insurance under Obamacare, it’s hard to see how Cantor’s replacement plan would help make health care more patient-focused while leaving so many without access to care.

Republicans are responding to the Supreme Court’s ruling upholding the individual mandate by constructing a new “death panels”-like lie. The law, they argue, imposes a burdensome tax on millions of middle class families who will have to pay a penalty for not purchasing health care coverage by 2014. The line originates in the majority’s decision, which found that Congress has the authority to require individuals to buy coverage under its taxing power, but it doesn’t mean what the Republicans are suggesting.

The truth is that the penalty for not buying insurance — $695 or 2.5 percent of household income — is well in line with other policies that are designed to encourage and promote a particular kind of economic behavior. On Friday morning, NBC’s Chuck Todd compared the penalty to a speeding ticket and asked House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) to distinguish between the two taxes. Cantor could not:

TODD: On the tax front quickly, is a speeding ticket a tax? By that same definition? You can avoid paying this tax if you get insurance. [...]

CANTOR: First of all, let me — I can’t respond to whether the speeding ticket would be considered a tax or not under the states’ authority any states’ authority. What I can tell you is the court came down on this issue decided that it was a tax to coerce some type of behavior.

Watch it:

In the case of health care, the law is offering an incentive for younger and healthier Americans to purchase health insurance coverage before they fall ill and pass on the costs of their treatments on to the government and other premium payers. Widespread take-up of coverage could cut government expenditures on uncompensated care in half. As Mitt Romney explained in 2006, “I don’t think the free market ever envisioned an idea that people would be able to do something and make other people pay for it.” And after successful implementation of reform in Massachusetts, few are.

On the federal level, the Congressional Budget Office is projecting that 30 million Americans will enroll in insurance as a result of the law, millions more will receive a tax cut to help them afford coverage, and of the remaining uninsured, “the majority of them will not be subject to the penalty“:

21 million nonelderly residents will be uninsured in 2016, but the majority of them will not be subject to the penalty. Unauthorized immigrants, for example, are exempted from the mandate to obtain health insurance. Others will be subject to the mandate but exempted from the penalty—for example, because they will have income low enough that they are not required to file an income tax return, because they are members of Indian tribes, or because the premium they would have to pay would exceed a specified share of their income (initially 8 percent in 2014 and indexed over time). CBO and JCT estimate that between 13 million and 14 million of the uninsured in 2016 will qualify for one or more of those exemptions. Of the remaining 7 million to 8 million uninsured, some individuals will be granted exemptions from the penalty because of hardship, and others will be exempted from the mandate on the basis of their religious beliefs. [...]

After accounting for all of those factors, CBO and JCT estimate that about 4 million people will pay a penalty because they will be uninsured in 2016 (a figure that includes uninsured dependents who have the penalty paid on their behalf).

Real world experience suggests that Americans are more likely to purchase insurance than pay the penalty for going without coverage. For instance, in Massachusetts, the only state with an insurance mandate, less than 1 percent of the state’s residents paid the penalty in 2009. Surveys of the uninsured have also found that an overwhelming majority — 76 percent of the uninsured — would rather comply with the individual mandate in the Affordable Care Act and purchase insurance than pay the far less onerous penalty for forgoing it. Experts believe that “health insurance mandates differ from some other requirements, such as the requirement to pay taxes” because “enrollees individually receive a tangible good–health insurance—that they value.”

WASHINGTON, D.C. — More than two years after Obamacare passed, a longtime Republican congressman admits that his party has “no” plan to replace it if they succeed in getting rid of the landmark health law.

Before the Supreme Court ruling was released yesterday, ThinkProgress spoke with Rep. Lee Terry (R-NE) about what Republicans would do to protect the 57 million Americans who have pre-existing conditions. “We’re going to work on that,” Terry promised, offering no specifics beyond “there’s going to be lots of ideas. We just have to accept all of them.”

When we pressed him on whether, two years later, Republicans had come up with the “replace” part of “repeal and replace,” Terry was frank: “no.”

KEYES: If it does ultimately all get struck down, what do we do for 57 million people who have pre-existing conditions?

TERRY: We’re going to work on that. We’re going to do it by looking at first, how do we lower health care costs, how do we make the system more efficient and less costly.

KEYES: Are there any ideas on how to do that?

TERRY: There’s going to be lots of ideas. We just have to accept all of them.

KEYES: Do we have any yet?

TERRY: We’re going to hold hearings, we’re going to invite experts. This is not going to be a closed process at all. It’s going to be completely open where we take as many ideas for reform as we can get and then we’ll see what it takes to deal with those that need more attention if they have significant pre-existing. So we’re going to deal with all of those issues.

KEYES: The mantra for a while has been “repeal and replace.” Is there an idea of what the replace would be yet?

TERRY: No. We want to take it in a very deliberate, open approach and take everybody’s ideas.

Watch it:

Republicans controlled Congress for most of the past two decades, yet did nothing to protect people with pre-existing conditions from health insurers who wanted to deny them coverage. Nor did they have any plan to help the tens of millions of Americans who lacked health insurance.

Though the GOP is again harping the “repeal and replace” mantra, it’s clear their plan begins and ends at step one.

Steven Perlberg contributed to this report.

Our guest blogger is Jessica Arons, director of the women’s health and rights program at the Center for American Progress.

Today’s historic Supreme Court ruling upholding the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare, is a tremendous victory for millions of Americans, and perhaps most of all for women. By upholding the health reform law, the Supreme Court will allow significant reforms to our health insurance system to be fully implemented, helping to keep health care costs down and protecting Americans from the health insurance industry’s worst abuses.

Here are the top 5 ways Obamacare helps women:

1. Women will no longer be denied insurance coverage for gender-related reasons. In today’s insurance market, it is common for insurers to refuse to cover women because of gender-based “pre-existing conditions,” such as having had a Cesarean section or being the victim of domestic violence or sexual assault. Thankfully, this practice will be outlawed under Obamacare in 2014. In the meantime, adults with pre-existing conditions who have been uninsured for at least six months can purchase affordable coverage through temporary Pre-existing Condition Insurance Plans.

2. Women will no longer be charged more for their insurance coverage just for being women. Under a practice known as “gender rating,” insurers currently charge women higher premiums—up to 150 percent more—than men for identical health benefits. As a result, women now pay $1 billion more than men each year for the same health plans in the individual market. As of 2014, however, under the Affordable Care Act, gender rating will become illegal in all new individual and small group plans.

3. Maternity care will be required in new insurance plans. Coverage for maternity care—health care that only women need—is routinely excluded in the individual insurance market. Only 12 percent of plans sold in the individual market even offer maternity coverage, which is frequently inadequate because of waiting periods or deductibles that can be as high as the cost of the birth itself. But once Obamacare is fully implemented in 2014, about 8.7 million women will have guaranteed access to maternity care in all new individual and small group plans.

4. Women will be guaranteed coverage of preventive services with no cost sharing. More than 50 percent of women have delayed seeking medical care due to cost, and one-third of women report forgoing basic necessities to pay for health care. But under the health reform law, insurers are now required to cover recommended preventive services such as mammograms, Pap smears, and well-baby care without cost sharing. More than 45 million women have already taken advantage of these services. And starting this August more services, including contraception, gestational diabetes screening, and breastfeeding supports, will be added to the list of preventive care that must be covered at no additional cost.

5. Women will gain better access to affordable health insurance. Starting in 2014 women and their families, as well as small businesses, will receive tax credits on an income-based sliding scale to help purchase insurance coverage. This will help individuals who earn up to $43,000 per year and up to $92,200 for families of four. Also in 2014 up to 10.3 million women will gain insurance coverage when Medicaid expands its income eligibility to include people with incomes below 138 percent of the federal poverty level—less than $15,000 for individuals and about $31,809 for a family of four in 2011. The health law also eliminates Medicaid’s categorical requirements, so that low-income women who meet the income requirements can be enrolled even if they have no children and are not pregnant.

To learn more about the benefits of Obamacare for women, see the Center for American Progress report, “Women and Obamacare.”

Responding to Thursday’s Supreme Court decision upholding the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act, Congressional Republicans have scheduled a vote in the House to repeal the law and Mitt Romney pledged to undo the measure if he’s elected president in November. But unless the GOP wins a super majority in the Senate — a scenario no one thinks is plausible — it can do little more than weaken Obamacare’s regulations and defund some of its provisions. Here is why:

1) Romney has no authority to issue waivers. Romney has promised to expand a provision of the Affordable Care Act that allows states to opt out of certain sections of the law to permit states to ignore it entirely. But the executive branch and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) likely don’t have the authority to grant such broad waivers. According to the law, HHS (together with the IRS) have waiver authority, but only if the states meet very specific requirements. Neither have blanket waiver authority, which would have to come from Congress. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) — the author of the waiver provision — has challenged Romney’s claims, saying, “Anybody who tries to move outside the standards of the bill — which is the coverage and costs and the like — well I’ll certainly fight that. But I think lots of other people will too.”

2) Congress can’t repeal the full law through reconciliation. Without the necessary 60 votes in the Senate for full repeal, Republicans are pledging to use a budget reconciliation bill to undo the ACA. But this process would only apply to the budget-related elements of the law and would thus leave many portions — including the mandate — intact. As health care expert Robert Laszewski put it, “Romney could end up creating a chaotic environment driven by enormous uncertainty over just which parts of the new health care law would be implemented–for consumers, health care providers, and insurers.”

3) Republicans have nothing to replace it with. David Frum explains that since the expansion of coverage provisions go into effect in 2014, Romney would have just one year to both repeal and replace the law. Republicans haven’t even coalesced around a single plan — and many in the party believe that the federal government should leave health care alone and want to leave the entire reform process to the states. Thus, “if replacement does not happen in the first 100 days, it won’t happen at all—that is, it won’t happen as a single measure, but rather will take the form of dozens of small incremental changes adopted episodically over the next 20 years.”

4) Americans support Obamacare’s provisions. While Americans may not like “Obamacare” — and the political process of passing it — they do support its major provisions and are likely to resist any effort by Republicans to take away their benefits. A recent Reuters/Ipsos poll found that while 56 percent of Americans oppose the law as a whole, 61 percent of respondents favored allowing young adults to stay on their parents’ insurance plans until age 26, 72 percent wish to maintain the requirement that companies with more than 50 workers provide health insurance for their employees, and 82 percent of respondents favored banning insurance companies from denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions. As more benefits roll out in 2014, it will be increasingly difficult for Republicans to argue for their repeal.

Following the Supreme Court’s ruling to uphold the Affordable Care Act, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) condemned the law as “an unprecedented and enormous tax.” Surprisingly, he also called on states to ignore the ruling and stop implementing the ACA’s exchanges. Interestingly, that would lead to the federal government stepping in:

“I urge every governor to stop implementing the health care exchanges that would help implement the harmful effects of this misguided law. Americans have loudly rejected this federal takeover of health care, and governors should join with the people and reject its implementation.”

The Affordable Care Act requires each state to set up a health insurance exchange where consumers can purchase insurance, but if a state does not implement one, then the federal government will operate the state’s exchange program. Officials in several Republican-dominated states put off setting up their exchanges until after the ruling, and governors in three states — Florida, South Carolina, and Wisconsin — say they will not act to implement the law until after the November election if Mitt Romney is elected and tries to repeal the law.

States have until November to turn in their exchange plans to the federal government so that the state programs can be approved by Jan. 1, 2013 — and in place by Jan. 1, 2014. But for states like Georgia, where legislators have done nothing to set up an exchange, and other states that have chosen not to act, it’s unclear if officials can set up an exchange program in time to avoid intervention from the federal government.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Businesses should be allowed to deny health insurance to cancer patients, according to a Republican senator, because “our nation was based on the foundation of freedom and limited government.”

Discussing health care outside the Supreme Court today, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) told ThinkProgress that there “shouldn’t” be a law requiring businesses to cover employees who have cancer because that would “create an obligation” for others. “When you create a right for somebody,” Johnson said, “you create an obligation for somebody else, and then you’re taking away that person’s right.”

KEYES: I know Richard Murdock had said even though businesses should give people, for instance, with cancer, health coverage, they shouldn’t be legally required by the federal government.

JOHNSON: They shouldn’t. Listen, our rights are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And when we start expanding beyond that realm, when you create a right for somebody, you create an obligation for somebody else, and then you’re taking away that person’s right. And that maybe doesn’t seem all that great, but it’s just true. Our nation was based on the foundation of freedom and limited government.

Watch it:

Under Obamacare, health insurance companies cannot deny people health insurance because of a pre-existing condition like cancer. Johnson remains strongly opposed to the law.

Unfortunately, he is not the first person to suggest that businesses should be permitted to deny insurance to cancer patients. Last week, Indiana Republican Senate nominee Richard Mourdock similarly argued that employers should be allowed to deny coverage to cancer patients “if they want to keep their health care costs down.”

Steven Perlberg contributed to this report.

Now that Chief Justice John Roberts has authored the Supreme Court’s 5-4 majority opinion upholding the constitutionality of the heart of the Affordable Care Act, some conservatives may be tempted to criticize the George W. Bush appointee.

Here is a sampling of what leading Republicans have said about Roberts after Bush nominated him in 2005. All 55 Republicans voted to confirm Roberts:

Rep. John Boehner (R-OH): “Supreme Court Justices John Roberts and Samuel Alito, President Bush’s two successful appointments to the high court, are who we hoped and thought they were — Justices committed to a fair and just interpretation of the Constitution.”

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY): “Judge Roberts because his position in a particular case did not mirror a Senator’s personal policy preferences, nor when it comes to a fair process should we require.”

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK): “I’m confident that Chief Justice John Roberts will help restore the Constitutional balance of power between the branches of government. Judge Roberts, I believe, will not attempt to write policy from the bench and will leave legislating to the Congress. …Judge Roberts proved himself during his confirmation hearing to be extraordinarily intelligent, highly-qualified and totally committed to applying the law justly.”

Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC): “We need a Justice, not a super legislator — a Justice who will rightly interpret our laws, not create laws.”

Sen. John Thune (R-SD): “As we pay tribute to the legacy of former Chief Justice Rehnquist, we see many of the qualities that marked his tenure of excellence mirrored in Judge Roberts. …Judge Roberts brings with him a brilliant legal mind and a profound respect for the Constitution and the Court.”

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL): “John Roberts’s confirmation was a defeat for the politicization of the courts and the notion that a judge should be an advocate for this or that view.”

Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX): “An exceptional judge, brilliant legal mind, and a man of outstanding character who understands his profound duty to follow the law.”

Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO): “He has proven himself as a judge who applies the law impartially with an eye toward the strict interpretation of the Constitution, rather than legislating from the bench.”

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT): “If I have ever seen anybody who deserves being on the Court more than John Roberts, I have to think pretty hard. John Roberts is a fine man.”

Frmr. Sen. George Allen (R-VA): “I found Judge Roberts to be a well-grounded individual whom I believe understands that the proper role of a judge is to apply the law and not invent it. I am confident he will be an outstanding member of the Supreme Court who will be a responsible and influential voice for years to come.”

Frmr Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA): “I can think of no one more qualified and worthy to fulfill the role of Chief Justice of the Supreme Court than Judge Roberts.”

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA): “I believe that at his hearing last week, Judge Roberts demonstrated that he will be fair and open-minded, and will approach cases without bias and without a personal agenda. This is the kind of judge that everyone – both liberals and conservatives alike – wants on the bench.”

Tell Congress that you stand with Obamacare by adding your name here.

The Supreme Court has upheld the individual mandate in Obamacare, paving the way for full implementation of the law in the states and ensuring that millions of uninsured Americans haves access to affordable coverage. The court upheld the provision as a tax, but found that it does violate the Commerce Clause.

The Medicaid expansion is limited, but not invalidated, the court found. In short, it decided that if a state does not expand the Medicaid program, as required by the law, the federal government cannot withhold Medicaid funds.

In short, “the entire ACA is upheld, with the exception that the federal government’s power to terminate states’ Medicaid funds is narrowly read.”

Chief Justice John Roberts joined Justices Sonya Sotomayor, Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Elena Kagan in the 5 to 4 decision. Justice Anthony Kennedy — who was considered a swing vote on in the case — sided with the conservatives.