Supreme Court upholds Affordable Care Act

The US Supreme Court ruled that the core of the federal health care legislation, the individual mandate, was constitutional, on Thursday morning.

The court upheld the majority of the Affordable Care Act, including the controversial individual mandate, according to the SCOTUS blog.

Chief Justice John Roberts sided with the liberal justices on the bench.

CNN initially got it wrong, reporting that the mandate was struck down.

As The Washington Post noted, the decision could play a pivotal role in President Obama’s bid for re-election. The health care law was a landmark achievement for the Obama presidency, while Republicans and presidential candidate Mitt Romney vowed to repeal it.

If upheld, the law would extend coverage to more than 30 million Americans who currently lack it, said The Post.

The court was deciding on three separate matters:

1. Whether the case could be heard yet, because of the Anti-Injunction Act which says that taxes cannot be challenged until they are first levied. The court was to decide whether the health care law’s penalties, which would be due in 2015, could be considered a tax, said The New York Times.

2. Whether the individual mandate, what some consider the core of the Affordable Care Act, was constitutional. The mandate requires even healthy people to have health insurance or risk paying a penalty, and would make universal health care a possibility.