National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius
United States Supreme Court
567 U.S. 519 (2012)
After Congress passed the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in 2010, numerous plaintiffs including business groups, individuals, and 26 states sued HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius (defendant), challenging both the individual mandate requiring people to buy health insurance or pay a penalty, and the Medicaid expansion provision conditioning all existing federal Medicaid funding on states agreeing to expand eligibility. The district court struck down the mandate as exceeding Congress's authority and found it non-severable, invalidating the whole Act; the Eleventh Circuit agreed the mandate was unconstitutional but found it severable, leaving the rest of the ACA intact, and the Supreme Court granted certiorari to resolve the split.
Whether the individual mandate is a valid exercise of Congress's taxing power, and whether the Medicaid expansion provision is a constitutional exercise of Congress's spending power.