The Supreme Court case, to be decided by June, grew out of a gathering in 2010 of far-right attorneys looking for a way to destroy Obamacare.

“This bastard has to be killed as a matter of political hygiene,” said Michael S. Greve, a former chairman of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, during a panel discussion. “I don’t care how this is done, whether it’s dismembered, whether we drive a stake through its heart, whether we tar and feather it and drive it out of town, whether we strangle it.”

The first attempt to strangle it failed by one vote in a 2012 Supreme Court ruling. The next assault is this case, organized by the same Competitive Enterprise Institute, an advocacy group with long ties to climate change denial and tobacco distortion campaigns.

They found four plaintiffs right out of a Rush Limbaugh ditto-headfest, all of whom have come under withering press scrutiny of late. One is just a half-year shy of eligibility for Medicare. Two others are military veterans who appear to qualify for premium-free federal care. Somehow, they claim to be “harmed” by a technicality in the health care law that allows the federal government to subsidize people who don’t get help from the states that did not set up their own markets.

“You are asking us to kick millions of Americans off health insurance just to save four people a few dollars,” said Judge Andre M. Davis, in oral arguments before a federal appeals court in Richmond, Va. That court ruled unanimously to throw out the challenge. But the hyperpartisan Supreme Court took up the case on appeal.

One of many ironies here is that at least three of those plaintiffs appear to qualify for the great socialist, single-payer system used by Medicare or by Veterans Affairs. So, they don’t really have to worry if their legal assault kills the health care of millions of people who don’t have access to the cheaper federal plans.

So long as judges do their dirty work, Republicans don’t have a problem with politicizing the judiciary. This week, in a move that dramatically changes the lives of millions of people, a Texas federal judge with a history of animus toward the Obama administration’s immigration policy brought a halt to plans to bring people out of the shadows. Before ruling against the president’s decision to defer deportation of certain immigrants, Judge Andrew Hanen, an appointee of George W. Bush, had left a trail of comments that could have come out of the mouth of any garden-variety Republican. With a swift blow this week, he did exactly what Republicans in Congress have been trying, but so far failed, to do.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. once used a memorable phrase to describe this kind of activism. “My job is to call balls and strikes, and not to pitch or bat,” he said during his confirmation hearings. By June of this year, we’ll see which side of the plate he’s on.