On Wednesday, the Supreme Court, considering how to interpret the Federal Tort Claims Act as it ruled in U.S. v. Kwai Fun Wong, ruled 5-4 to take a more liberal view than the one espoused in the original wording of the Federal Tort Claims Act, with the deciding vote coming from Justice Anthony Kennedy. Kennedy’s decision may offer a clue to the upcoming case in June when the court considers ObamaCare in King v. Burwell, for if Kennedy was wiling to take a more lenient view on Wednesday, and he is consistent, than the chances of overturning ObamaCare become very slim indeed.

Here’s the reason why: the Wednesday case hinged on which one of two avenues SCOTUS would take, whether to stick to the letter of the law or to manipulate it to achieve a more “just” result. When Kennedy joined the four leftist judges on the court, Breyer, Ginsburg, Kagan and Souter, he voted for interpreting the law liberally. In Kwai Fun Wong, the issue was whether a plaintiff could file suit after the statute of limitations had run out. The law clearly states that a suit “shall be forever barred” if the plaintiff files after one of the required deadlines.

The question arises when a plaintiff missed the deadline because a court erred or the government did not provide information necessary for her to file. In those cases, the courts can rely on the “equitable tolling of the statute of limitations.” As Noah Feldman, professor at Harvard law school writes, “The ‘tolling’ part means that the statute of limitations will be frozen at the moment when the plaintiff was blocked from filing, thus allowing the suit to go forward later. The ‘equitable’ part means that the court is exercising the form of justice known as ‘equity.’”

Feldman writes that Justice Elena Kagan, writing the majority decision, ruled that “if Congress clearly stated that a court lacked the jurisdiction to proceed on a time-barred claim, then equitable tolling shouldn’t be allowed. But she concluded that Congress had made no such clear statement. It followed that equitable tolling is allowed, and that the law can be bent when there is good reason to do so.”

Thus, Kagan argued that the primary job of the courts is look for equity rather than follow the strict letter of the law. Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the opposition, argued cogently that the words “shall be forever barred” were abundantly clear. He said Congress meant “to keep the universally recognized meaning of the words … that meaning, of course, cannot change over time.”

For Barack Obama and Obamacare supporters to win in King v Burwell, the court has to ignore the literal meaning of the phrase from which Obamacare’s right to exist was derived, that tax subsidies are only available for health insurance purchased on an exchange “established by the state.” if that phrase is not tampered with, the state exchanges would crumble and the states relying on exchanges created by the federal government would also wither away.

So ObamaCare supporters must aver that the phrase should be interpreted as “established by the state or the federal government on the state’s behalf.” And that case rests on the court’s sympathy for equity, and not the letter of the law.

That is why Kennedy’s vote on Wednesday may be an ominous sign for those wishing to repeal Obamacare.