Critics of Obama’s plan are not just ornery partisans. Legitimate concerns include: The law is too big, it creates another gargantuan bureaucracy that will have the flexibility and compassion of Siri, and it contains too many uncertainties and too many fill-in-the-blanks beyond the reach of elected officials.

Democrats pushed through the legislation without popular support on the bet that Americans would like it once they got used to it. We may or may not find out, depending on what the justices decide. But this much we do know: Civil rights activists who were beaten, bloodied and killed in the struggle to have a voice were nothing like the bureaucrats and politicians who insist that the ACA is a comparable victory. The Civil Rights Act was a monument to freedom and human dignity. Health-care reform is . . . something else.

Well-intentioned though it may be — and serviceable though it could become with proper tweaking — the ACA is not about human freedom. It is, in fact, quite the opposite.