…Simon Lazarus, JD, senior counsel for the Constitutional Accountability Center, who also spoke at the briefing, said that Justice Kennedy shifted the entire legal argument of the case when he interpreted the challenger’s case to mean that the authors of the bill intended for the provision to punish states.

Lazarus quoted Kennedy, who said, “Such a threat could amount to unconstitutional ‘coercion’ to force states to set up exchanges.”

If Kennedy’s perspective holds, Lazarus said “the most likely result” is a decision in the administration’s favor on the basis of “constitutional avoidance,” which he defined as a rule that says federal law should be followed in a way that “avoids raising difficult constitutional questions.”…