On November 8, Representative Trent Franks (R-AZ) and thirty-nine other Republican members of the House of Representatives filed a "friend of the court" brief in support of a legal challenge to the Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare") based on the Origination Clause that will be heard by the District of Columbia Federal Court of Appeals in early 2014.
The case, Sissel v United States Department of Health and Human Services, was filed in the Washington, D.C. District Federal Court by the Pacific Legal Foundation on behalf of Matt Sissel, an Iraq war veteran who lives in Iowa, where he owns a small business, on July 26, 2010.
The Origination Clause of the Constitution, Article 1, Section 7, Clause 1 states "All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills." Not a word of the Affordable Care Act originated in the House of Representatives. Instead, using a legislative trick, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) took an innocuous bill that had passed the House unanimously on October 8, 2009 by a 416-0 vote, the Service Members Home Ownership Tax Act of 2009, removed every word of its text following the first sentence, and replaced it with the Affordable Care Act language.
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