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RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Renee Montagne.

LINDA WERTHEIMER, HOST:

And I'm Linda Wertheimer. In a momentous and long-anticipated ruling, the Supreme Court has decided to uphold President Obama's health care law. The decision is a major victory for the president.

MONTAGNE: His challenger, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, will offer his own response in a few moments. For their part, House Republicans have vowed to repeal the law.

A lot of stand-up comedians make us laugh, but only a handful, like Lenny Bruce, Woody Allen or Richard Pryor, actually change the way that comedy is done. It's too early to be sure, but another one of them may be Louis C.K., the paunchy, balding, ginger-haired comic who's something of a quiet radical. He has one of those comic talents that's at its best when it isn't worried about being funny.

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VIVIANA HURTADO, HOST:

This is TELL ME MORE from NPR News. I'm Viviana Hurtado. Michel Martin is away. Still to come, we see how African-American lawyers fought civil rights battles in court even when the law cast them as second class citizens. That's in a few minutes.

Violence against women in Mexico, Honduras, and Guatemala has reached crisis proportions, according to a report by the Nobel Women's Initiative. The group's delegation spent ten days documenting homicides, disappearances, and attacks of sexual violence. Laura Carlsen wrote the report and discusses the findings with guest host Viviana Hurtado.

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VIVIANA HURTADO, HOST:

And now it's time for the occasional series we call In Year Ear. That's when guests of our program tell us what songs they listen to for a little inspiration.

Today we get the personal playlist of Tia Mowry. She is the star of the BET sitcom "The Game." She joined us recently to talk about her book "Oh Baby! Pregnancy Tales and Advice from One Hot Mama to Another." And here's what's playing in Tia Mowry's ear.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "FOR YOU")

KENNY LATIMORE: (Singing) Ooh. Ooh.

The entire health care sphere has been bracing for what might happen and all the chaos that might ensue from what the court might do, but the ruling doesn't change much about the Affordable Care Act.

There was a lot of speculation about how the Supreme Court would decide, but almost every prognostication was wrong: from who the swing vote would be (it was Chief Justice John Roberts, who wrote the opinion), to what the basis for the opinion would be (it wasn't the Commerce Clause).

Renee Montagne and Linda Wertheimer has the latest on the Supreme Court's ruling on the Affordable Care Act. The court ruled that the law — with its "individual mandate," or requirement that virtually all Americans buy health insurance — is constitutional.

The law was upheld thanks to Chief Justice John Roberts, who sided with the court's more liberal wing, on a very narrow grounds: Instead of saying Congress has the authority to regulate interstate commerce, they said Congress has the authority to levy taxes. And the penalty for people who do not have health care is a tax and therefore constitutional.