US Supreme Court upholds Obama health-care law

Pro-Obamacare demostrators lobbying outside the U.S. Supreme Court. PHOTO/Carolyn Kaster/Associated Press

The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld President Barack Obama’s health-care law, which requires uninsured Americans to purchase health insurance under threat of a financial penalty.

In a 5-4 ruling, Chief Justice John Roberts, appointed to the court by former president George W. Bush, joined the court’s four liberal justices, Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, in upholding the law.

Roberts, who wrote the majority opinion, said the mandate may be upheld under the power of Congress to tax and not under the commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution, which states that the U.S. Congress has the power “to regulate commerce …among the several states.”

It’s this clause, the Obama administration had asserted, that gave the federal government the right to legislate Americans into purchasing health insurance, whether they want it or not.

The law was challenged by officials in 26 states, led by Florida, who argue the White House and President Obama are overreaching in their interpretation of the clause. They claimed the federal government had no right to compel private citizens to purchase a certain product, in this case health insurance, that the law infringes on state rights, and that the individual mandate should be struck down as unconstitutional.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, derisively referred to by its Republican critics as Obamacare, was considered to be the U.S. president’s signature domestic policy achievement.

The law seeks to cut skyrocketing health-care costs and extend health insurance to 30 million uninsured Americans.

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press