As examples, the brief asserts that if the individual mandate is upheld in the health care arena, government would feel free to order citizens to take vitamins, join health clubs, or buy General Motors cars.

The titanic battle over federal health care reform is now before the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Thomas More Law Center today announced that it had filed its petition for certiorari in Thomas More Law Center v. Obama, its challenge to a June 29 ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit that upheld the so-called “individual mandate” under the landmark health care legislation. That provision of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act requires individuals to purchase at least minimum health care insurance coverage.

“Review is necessary to establish a meaningful limitation on congressional power under the Commerce Clause,” the petition argues. “If the Act 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 imaginable and to do so by ordering private citizens to engage in affirmative acts, under penalty of law.”

As examples, the brief asserts that if the individual mandate is upheld in the health care arena, government would feel free to order citizens to take vitamins, join health clubs, or buy General Motors cars.

The petition may be at the leading edge of a wave of litigation over the controversial legislation, challenging the first of several expected appeals court rulings in coming months.

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