Which Supreme Court case held that the individual mandate in Obamacare was constitutional because it was a tax?

• A. Baker v. Carr
• B. National Federation of Business v. Sebelius
• C. Printz v. U.S.
• D. U.S. v. Lopez

Answer: (B)

The main idea being tested is how Congress can justify a mandate using its taxing power rather than the Commerce Clause. In the landmark ruling, the Court held that the individual mandate can be sustained as a tax. The penalty for not having insurance—the shared responsibility payment—was viewed as a tax collected by the IRS. Because taxes are within Congress’s power to lay and collect, and because the tax is designed and administered like a regular tax term, it fits within constitutional authority even though it influences behavior indirectly rather than regulating an existing market directly.

This framing matters because it shows a different route for constitutional support than regulating interstate commerce. The Court acknowledged that, while the mandate couldn’t be supported under the Commerce Clause, it could be under the taxing power, which is broad enough to justify this kind of mechanism. It’s also helpful to note that the decision still left some other parts of the law—the Medicaid expansion, for example—subject to different constitutional constraints, emphasizing that the tax-based justification was the specific basis for upholding the mandate itself.

Other cases cited in this context deal with different issues and do not provide the same tax-based justification for the mandate. They concern things like legislative apportionment, federal commands to state or local officials, or limits on Congress’s reach under the Commerce Clause.