Why did Antonin Scalia criticize the Court’s decision in King v. Burwell?

In the case of King v. Burwell (2015), Justice Antonin Scalia criticized the Supreme Court’s majority decision, arguing that the Court had ignored the "normal rules of interpretation" to preserve the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.1

Scalia, a staunch proponent of textualism, believed the Court should have adhered strictly to the statutory language. The plaintiffs in the case had argued that because the law explicitly authorized tax credit subsidies only for insurance exchanges "established by the State," the Internal Revenue Service lacked the authority to provide those same subsidies to consumers using the federal exchange. By ruling that the language was ambiguous and interpreting it to include federal exchanges to prevent the destabilization of the insurance market, the majority departed from what Scalia viewed as the proper, literal application of the law.21