Following a Circuit Court ruling that the individual mandate to purchase health insurance contained in Obamacare is constitutional, the Thomas More Law Center has petitioned the Supreme Court to review the lower court's decision on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) and its mandate.
Usually, the Supreme Court agrees to such reviews only when two Circuit Courts have issued contradictory decisions, which has yet to happen in the case of the PPACA mandate. Federal courts in Richmond, Va., and Atlanta, Ga., have heard arguments on the same issue but have not yet rendered a decision.
“The Sixth Circuit was the first appellate court to reach a decision on whether the Commerce Clause authorizes Congress to force private citizens to purchase healthcare insurance under penalty of federal law,” the Michigan-based center said in a statement.
“If the Act [Obamacare] is understood to fall within Congress’s Commerce Clause authority, the federal government will have absolute and unfettered power to create complex regulatory schemes to fix every perceived problem.”
The Supreme Court generally takes on only a tiny fraction of cases that are petitioned for review, but court observers and legal scholars expect the high court to take up this issue during its next term starting in October. A decision would then be reached prior to the presidential election in 2012.