Obamacare: court grants PLF’s request to make Origination Clause arguments

October 12, 2012 | By TIMOTHY SANDEFUR

The federal district court yesterday granted PLF’s motion to file our amended complaint in Sissel v. HHS, our case challenging the constitutionality of the “tax” on not having health insurance. As my colleague Paul Beard explains in this video, Chief Justice John Roberts’ decision in the NFIB v. Sebelius case this summer recharacterized the PPACA’s financial penalty as a “tax,” which was enough for him to uphold its constitutionality—but it raised a new problem: the Constitution says that all “bills for raising revenue” must “originate in the House. Yet the PPACA did not originate in the House; it originated in the Senate. The Supreme Court has rarely addressed the Origination Clause, but now we are asking the D.C. District Court to rule that the tax on not having insurance violates the Constitution. You can read more about that case, and about our client, Matt Sissel, here.