George Will’s latest column features our lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Obamacare, which we’ll be arguing in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday. “In June 2012,” writes Will, “a Supreme Court majority accepted a, shall we say, creative reading of the ACA by Chief Justice John Roberts…that the penalty, which the ACA repeatedly calls a penalty, is really just a tax… Did it, however, originate in the House? Of course not.”
The Act originated in the Senate, which replaced the entire text of a bill the House had passed months earlier on a different subject, with what became the ACA. “Case law establishes that for a Senate action to qualify as a genuine ‘amendment’ to a House-passed revenue bill, it must be ‘germane to the subject matter of the [House] bill,’” as Will notes. “The Senate’s shell game — gutting and replacing the House bill — created the ACA from scratch. The ACA obviously flunks the germaneness test, without which the House’s constitutional power of originating revenue bills would be nullified.”
You can learn more about the case at our case page, which includes an in-depth backgrounder about the case and about our client, Matt Sissel. You can also read our briefs here and here, and the government’s brief here, and read a FAQ page about our case here. Also, you can watch PLF attorney Todd Gaziano’s recent congressional testimony about the Origination Clause here.