The Obama administration surprised many yesterday when the U.S. Department of Justice asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear its appeal of a decision by the Eleventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta that the health insurance mandate provision found in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), the comprehensive health care reform legislation that President Barack Obama signed into law in March 2010, is unconstitutional.
In August, the Eleventh Circuit held 2-1 that the individual mandate, which would require most individuals to obtain health insurance or pay a fine, exceeded the power of the U.S. Congress under the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution. According to the majority opinion, “This economic mandate represents a wholly novel and potentially unbounded assertion of congressional authority: the ability to compel Americans to purchase an expensive health insurance product they have elected not to buy, and to make them re-purchase that insurance product every month for their entire lives.”
Although there have been a number of legal challenges to the PPACA, this one was particularly interesting to a lot of people because it was filed by governors and attorneys general of 26 states that oppose the health care reform law. The 26 states, along with the National Federation of Independent Business, also filed petitions with the Supreme Court yesterday urging the Court to strike the law down.
The Eleventh Circuit is the only appellate court to rule that any part of the PPACA is unconstitutional. Earlier this summer, the Sixth Circuit in Cincinnati upheld the law, deciding that the individual mandate was constitutional, and more recently, the Fourth Circuit in Richmond blocked challenges to the law.
Since the legal challenges to the PPACA began, many analysts have speculated that the U.S. Supreme Court may eventually have to decide the issue. This appears to be an even more likely scenario now that the circuits are split on the issue, one federal appeals court has struck down the law, and all sides of the issue want the Supreme Court to review the legal challenges. In fact, after yesterday’s developments, the Supreme Court may be more inclined to hear one or more of the cases challenging the PPACA in its upcoming term. This means the Court could issue a decision regarding the massive health care reform law by the end of June 2012.
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