The Supreme Court declined to consider a new constitutional challenge to the Affordable Care Act that was based on the way the law was enacted.
The Pacific Legal Foundation, representing Iowa artist Matt Sissel, argued that passage of the law violated the Constitution’s requirement that revenue-raising legislation must originate in the House of Representatives. The ACA, it said, was a revenue-raising bill that improperly had its start in the Senate.
The Justices’ decision not to hear the case means that the ACA will continue to operate at least through the November elections. The health care law is therefore almost certain to remain a major focus of campaigning by both Republicans and Democrats running for the presidency and for Congress.
The latest challenge was based on the origination clause of the Constitution, which declares that “all bills raising revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives.”
Attorneys for the Pacific Legal Foundation, which often advocates for conservative causes, noted that the Supreme Court held in 2012 that the ACA effectively imposed a tax on people who fail to buy insurance. Thus, they said, the health law was a revenue-raising bill, which unlawfully did not originate in the House.
That argument was rejected by a federal trial court judge and by two panels of appellate judges, who split their reasons along political party lines.
Three judges appointed by Democrats said the origination clause only applies when a law’s “primary purpose” is to raise revenues, while the ACA primary purpose was to increase the number of insured Americans. The revenues, they said, were only a “byproduct” of that effort.
Four Republican appointees dismissed that logic as “untenable,” noting that the ACA was expected to generate revenues of about $500 billion over 10 years.
But they said the law originated in the House of Representatives, as the clause requires, because it started out as a House bill in 2009. That bill was substantially amended to become the beginnings of the Affordable Care Act. It was later passed by the House and Senate, and signed into law by President Obama.
