Real News From The Blaze:' What Legal Precedent Will Supreme Court ObamaCare Decision Set

With the surprising swing vote of Chief Justice John Roberts, the Supreme Court announced their ruling Thursday to uphold the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. ObamaCare, and it's controversial "individuala mandate" component.

With a 5-4 majority, the court held that the mandate violates the Commerce Clause but was affirmed constitutional as a taxing power, and the law was upheld. Writing in the majority, Roberts said that it's not the court's job to decide whether Obama's plan "embodies sound policies. That judgment is entrusted to the nation's elected leaders."

"Because the Constitution permits such a tax, it is not our role to forbid it, or to pass upon its wisdom or fairness," Roberts wrote.

Despite upholding the law, the court's disagreement with the logic that the government argued--Congress had the authority to pass the mandate as part of the Commerce Clause--and further identifying Obamacare as a tax, the decision may have some long-lasting negative implications for liberals. Some have argued that the path Roberts led the court in the decision will be an end for the Commerce Clause, as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg wrote in an opinion joined by Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan; "The Chief Justice's crabbed reading of the Commerce Clause harks back to the era in which the Court routinely thwarted Congress' efforts to regulate the national economy in the interest of those who labor to sustain it."

"This is a substantial rollback of Congress' regulatory powers, and the chief justice knows it," Tom Scocca writes in a Slate post titled "Obama Wins the Battle, Roberts Wins the War."