By Deacon Keith Fournier - WASHINGTON, DC (Catholic Online) - On Thursday, June 28, 2012 the United States Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the individual mandate of the Affordable care Act (aka Obama Care). The dense opinion was authored for a 5- 4majority by Chief Justice John Roberts. Justices Kennedy, Alito, Scalia and Thomas strongly dissented. However, a Court speaks through its majority. The Majority opinion upheld the mandate of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, not under the Commerce Clause, but as an exercise of Congress' power to tax.

The Obama Administration initially argued that the penalty for non-compliance with the Affordable Care Act's mandate to purchase insurance was not a tax. In fact, candidate and then President Obama, as well as the Congressional proponents of the legislation, argued that it was not a tax. They changed their position in the Chambers of the US Supreme Court. Now that the Supreme Court has held that the penalties for non-compliance are a tax, the political opposition has shifted. For all of us concerned about Religious Liberty, this is about much more than semantics. The Administration is saying violate your faith or pay a punitive tax to the Federal Government!

The major First Amendment Free Exercise of Religion concerns triggered by the HHS Mandate in the implementation of the Affordable Care Act have given rise to numerous lawsuits on their way to the US Supreme Court. They properly argue that the implementation of the Act through the HHS Mandate is unconstitutional because it violates the Free Exercise of Religion under the First Amendment. Those cases might have become moot had the Court struck down the Act. They are now more important - and much more urgent - than before.