Heading for a High Court Showdown?

Some smart people think so. "A major lesson to be learned from the court's previous decision ... is that a majority of the justices do not want to determine the fate of a hugely important social issue," Supreme Court super-litigator Tom Goldstein wrote for ScotusBlog.

Ezra Klein of Vox agreed: "The Supreme Court simply isn't going to rip insurance from tens of millions of people in order to teach Congress a lesson about grammar."

Let's hope they're right, but I have my doubts. Certainly, Roberts zealously guards the court's institutional standing against accusations of overreaching. But only to a point. The Voting Rights Act offers an example. In 2009, Roberts, as with the Affordable Care Act, demonstrated his willingness to stretch the language of the statute in order to save it -- temporarily. Four years later, he wrote the majority ruling striking down the law's key provision.

Importantly, Roberts' initial restraint in that case, as in his ruling upholding the Affordable Care Act, was based on constitutional considerations: the long-standing principle that the court, if possible, should avoid overturning the work of a coequal branch of government.

In the looming case about federal subsidies, which involves statutory interpretation (actually, whether the court should accept a federal agency's interpretation of a statute), Roberts may be inclined to a less deferential stance.

Indeed, the two D.C. Circuit judges who invalidated the subsidies -- Thomas Griffith and Raymond Randolph -- cast their decision in terms of the "legislative supremacy" of Congress and the need for judges to respect statutory language, not substitute their own judgment about what Congress intended.

Last time around, Roberts was protecting the court from appearing to overstep its constitutional muscle. This case is different, and so, I fear, could be the outcome.

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Ruth Marcus' email address is ruthmarcus@washpost.com.