The Supreme Court has declined to hear yet another Obamacare lawsuit, this one challenging the law for the way in which Congress wrote it.
The justices said Tuesday they won’t take up the case Sissel v. Department of Health and Human Services, a case arguing that the Affordable Care Act violates the Constitution’s “origination clause,” which says tax-raising bills must start in the House.
After the court ruled four years ago that the law’s penalty on the uninsured is a tax, the challengers bringing Sissel argued that the language setting up the penalty should have originated in the House, instead of the Senate, since it was deemed to be a tax.
They appealed to the Supreme Court for a hearing after a three-judge panel for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit struck it down and the full appeals court subsequently declined to consider it again.
The 2010 healthcare law did start out in the House, but was heavily amended once it reached the Senate. The legislation is an amalgamation of several different legislative proposals that were created by different congressional committees and then combined into a single bill.
