Appeals court zaps PPACA challenge

“Accordingly,” Jolly says, “we vacate the district court’s judgment and remand this case with instructions to dismiss for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction.”

Hotze and Braidwood wanted to challenge PPACA individual and employer mandate penalties on the basis that the mandate penalties really originated in the U.S. Senate, as proposed Amendment Number 2786 to H.R. 3590. The Senate “amendment” was more than 2,000 pages long, and it replaced the original language of H.R. 3590, which started out as a short Service Members Home Ownership Tax Act of 2009 bill.

Hotze and Braidwood say the process used to draft and pass PPACA violated the Origination Clause of the U.S. Constitution, which requires new taxes to originate in the House.

The district court judge dismissed the case, arguing that the bill was not mainly a bill for raising revenue, and that the bill had originated in the House. 

Jolly says the federal courts must avoid deciding a constitutional issue if they can find another ground they can use to dispose of a case.

Hotze himself already had the kind of minimum essential coverage (MEC) that PPACA requires and was not going to have to pay a penalty for lacking MEC, Jolly says. Jolly says any other mandate-related injuries that Hotze says he suffered or might suffer are either vague or speculative.

“Thus, although we do not doubt that many have suffered an injury in fact at the hands of the individual mandate, the plaintiffs’ complaint does not allege that Dr. Hotze is among them,” Jolly writes.

Representatives from Dr. Hotze’s practice and Sylvia Burwell, the secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), were not immediately available to comment on the ruling.