Fourth Circuit Rules in FAVOR of Government in Obamacare Subsidies Case

Making sure our readers keep up with this roller-coaster day in health reform land: The Fourth Circuit released its own opinion (3-0, with a strong concurrence from J. Davis) rejecting the subsidies challenge pending in that court right after the DC Circuit released its own opinion sustaining the same challenge there . The Fourth Circuit went with a straight Chevron argument, but indicated it thought the government had the better reading of the statutory text in any event. Judge Davis concurred specially to make the point that Chevron wasn't even necessary: that the statute clearly requires the subsidies on the federal exchanges. Of interest to statutory interpretation types (and along the lines of what I've been arguing in previous posts), Judge Davis also argued that this isn't a case of "textualism v. purposivism" or statutory text versus some amorphous concept of congressional intent.  Davis argued that the text of the statute as a whole answers the question definitely in favor of the Government.