CNN’s Toobin: No train wrecks at court

Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts’s views of a key ObamaCare case argued on Wednesday are “a mystery,” according to CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin.

{mosads}Toobin remarked that Roberts said nearly nothing during Wednesday’s oral arguments on whether people who buy ObamaCare on state health exchanges can be given federal subsidies.

“Kennedy’s vote I would not put clearly in one camp or the other,” Toobin said on CNN. “Roberts is almost entirely a mystery.”

If the justices rule against the federal government, about 8 million people could lose subsidies that help them buy health insurance.

Toobin called Roberts’s relative silence “unusual.”

“The chief justice is usually one of the most active questioners,” he said.

The CNN analyst made news in 2012 when the Supreme Court considered ObamaCare’s constitutionality.

He argued that Solicitor General Donald Verrilli had argued so poorly in favor of ObamaCare that the Supreme Court would gut the law, describing the performance as a “train wreck.”

In the end, the court ruled 5-4 in favor of Verrilli and the federal government, with Roberts casting the decisive vote.

On Wednesday, Toobin tweeted about his past remarks.

No trainwrecks! I promise a measured, careful (i.e. less wrong) response to oral args tomw in #King v. Burwell. #scotus

— Jeffrey Toobin (@JeffreyToobin) March 3, 2015